Workshop: Competition and Competitiveness

The Competition and Competitiveness Project – an interdisciplinary project in the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex, funded by the Leverhulme Trust – will hold its fourth and final workshop on Thursday 6th and Friday 7th June 2024 in the Lakeview Room at the University of Essex.

The workshop will consider competition and competitiveness and aims to bring together people who work on competition or who have research interests close to it. Its purpose is to take stock of current and existing research on competition and competitiveness and establish a network of scholars who work in this and related areas. The format is intended to maximise opportunities for in-depth and interdisciplinary discussions, both formal and informal.

Attendance is free, with lunch, tea and coffee provided on both days.

Please register a place so we can accurately order catering.

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Speakers:

Day 1

• Thomas Buser (University of Amsterdam) - 'A competitive world: measuring attitudes towards competition in a global sample'
• Marc-William Palen (Universtiy of Exeter) - 'Left-wing visions of peaceful economic competition, c. 1846-1976.'
• Elke Weidenholzer (University of Essex) - 'Fair Play or Winning Ugly? Risk Taking Behaviour in Elite Competition under Different Rules'

Day 2

• Yvette Drissen (Tilburg University) - 'On the Benefits of Competition'
• Ronja Heymann (University of Essex) - 'Political Competition Beyond the Market Model'
• Hannes Kuch (Goethe University Frankfurt) - 'Capitalist Competition'

*Exact schedule and timings TBC

Top, l-r: Thomas Buser; Yvette Drissen; Ronja Heymann
Bottom, l-r: Hannes Kuch; Marc-William Palen; Elke Weidenholzer

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About the Speakers

Dr Thomas Buser is Professor of Behavioral Applied Microeconomics at the University of Amsterdam and a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute. He is currently the PI on a 5-year ERC Starting Grant (2019-2024).

Most of his research is concerned with the link between personality traits and career outcomes. In Buser's work he uses lab and field experiments as well as registry and survey data.

Dr Yvette Drissen is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Academic Collaborative Center for an Inclusive Labor Market, which she combines with her position as a lecturer in ethics, political and social philosophy, both at Tilburg University (the Netherlands). She recently defended her dissertation called ‘When Success Becomes the New Normal: The Competitive Society and its Symptoms’, where she explores the conceptual, philosophical-anthropological, normative and practical implications of distributing important scarce goods in our society in a competitive way.

Ronja Heymann is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Essex and part of the "Competition and Competitiveness Project". Her thesis looks at the relationship between competition and democracy. In her research, Heymann aims to explore this relationship in its multidimensionality, considering both de-democratizing effects of competition as well as the multiple ways competition is implicated in and part of democratic theory and practice.

Dr Hannes Kuch is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt. He served as a visiting substitute professor of Social Philosophy at the Goethe-University Frankfurt and of Political Theory and Political Philosophy at the Technical University Munich. Recently Kuch acquired his Habilitation (the German second dissertation), based on a study on "Ethical Life and Liberal Socialism". He wrote his Habilitation in the context of a research project on social freedom and market socialism, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He received his PhD in 2012 at the Free University Berlin, after working on a research project on linguistic violence.
Kuch was a Research Fellow at the Global Ethic Institute Tuebingen, with a project on "Corporations, Human Rights, and Responsibility", at Stockholm University and at the Hannover Institute for Philosophical Research.

Dr Marc-William Palen specialises in the intersection of British and American imperialism within the broader history of globalisation since c. 1800. He is particularly interested in comparing and contrasting the British and American Empires from the mid nineteenth century and, more broadly, in exploring how political economy, gender, humanitarianism, and ideology have shaped global imperial expansion. He has just finished his second book, , with Princeton University Press exploring the intersections of global capitalism, anti-imperialism, and peace activism from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, named among the 'Best Books' of 2024 by New Yorker Magazine.

Palen believes that connecting the past with the present is an essential part of a historian's craft. I am the co-director (with David Thackeray and Andrew Dilley) of the History and Policy Global Economics and History Forum in London, and contribute to the Mainz-Exeter Global Humanitarianism Research Academy. His commentary on historical and contemporary global affairs has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, the BBC, the Conversation, the Australian, History Today, Newsweek, and Time, among others. He is also the editor of the , the blog of the Centre for Imperial & Global History. You can follow him on Twitter @MWPalen

Dr Elke Weidenholzer is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Essex, currently working for the “Competition and Competitiveness” Leverhulme Trust project (Competition and Competitiveness). She holds a PhD from the University of Vienna. Her research interests include Experimental Economics, Behavioural Economics and Game Theory. Her most current projects focus on competitive behaviour in different settings, including the role of dishonesty, strategic responses to rule changes and the implications of affirmative action vs. taxation in competitive environments.

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Timetable TBC

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About the Project

The Competition and Competitiveness Project is a research project in the School of Philosophical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Studies' funded by a Research Leadership Award from the Leverhulme Trust. It started in October 2020 and is running for four years.

The aim of the project is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the different forms of competition and competitiveness and the role they play in a wide range of social practices and institutions, for example, markets, the arts, sciences, and sports.

The project takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on historical sources, social scientific insights and philosophical analysis.

Find out more about the Project here: https://www.essex.ac.uk/research-projects/competition-and-competitiveness

Follow the Project on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ccp_essex

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Getting to the University of Essex:

The University of Essex is situated at the edge of the town of Colchester, which can be reached easily from central London (trains depart from Liverpool St. Station or Stratford). Trains go to either Wivenhoe or Colchester.

Further details: https://www.essex.ac.uk/life/colchester-campus/how-to-get-here

The Lakeview Room is situated in the Silberrad Student Centre, between the Albert Sloman Library and the lake.

Accommodation:

We are unable to provide accommodation for attendees. Wivenhoe House Hotel – located on the University of Essex's Colchester Campus – might have availability during the workshop and both Colchester and Wivenhoe have hotel and short term rental options.

If you have any questions, you can contact us at [email protected]

Host or Publisher Competition and Competitiveness Project