Telefónica Foundation launched “En Directo”: a window to rethink tomorrow in the post-COVID-19 era

With the aim of creating a space for open and participatory thinking in the community, Fundación Telefónica Movistar inaugurated a series of virtual meetings where important international personalities will share their knowledge and analyze the future in the face of this new post-COVID-19 scenario.

Topics to be discussed include the role of digitalisation, the socio-economic impact on different productive sectors, as well as on education and learning and work models, the digital divide in the most vulnerable groups, the balance of power in the world or the importance of human values and the increasingly urgent need for an ethical framework appropriate to this new reality.

Opening: “Challenges in the face of an uncertain future” 

The first meeting was held on April 20, with presentations by two of the most acclaimed sociologists in the world. Saskia Sassen, Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences 2013, and Richard Sennett, professor of Sociology at MIT and of Humanities at New York University.

Although their intellectual line may differ, in this meeting both reflected on the future of metropolises after the Pandemic: technology, social networks, Capitalism, the Trump administration and the responses of world leaders to COVID-19.

To see the opening talk, you can search on social networks #RepensandoElMañana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkxKHXIVQNQ&feature=youtu.be

To follow the agenda of meetings:
IG @fundaciontef_ar
https://www.fundaciontelefonica.com.ar/en-directo/

Speakers

Saskia Sassen (@saskiasassen) www.saskiasassen.com

Saskia Sassen is a sociologist, writer, professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York and member of the Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired from 2009 to 2015.
Renowned author and editor, she has received multiple awards and distinctions: In 2013 she received the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences and in 2018 she was awarded the CLACSO Award.

Born in the Netherlands, she grew up in Argentina and Italy, studied in France, was raised in five languages, and began her professional life in the United States.

Richard Sennett (@richardsennett)
www.richardsennett.com

Richard Sennett is an American sociologist of the pragmatic philosophical school. He works as a Senior Advisor to the United Nations on its Program on Climate Change and Cities. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and a Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at MIT. 

Throughout his career he has written about social life in cities, changes in work and Social Theory.
Among other awards, he received the Hegel Prize, the Spinoza Prize, and the Harvard University Centennial Medal.