Friday, October 16, 2026
11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (GMT+07:00) Yogyakarta
Location: Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta
Autocratic leaders, largely elected, suddenly dominate the world’s political landscape, even in the world’s largest democracies, the United States and India. Resistance to them so far has been piecemeal and erratic. What are the strategies and tactics to be learned from nations with long histories of both authoritarianism and resourceful opposition to it? How can the experience of the Global South contribute to a wider global conversation? Rev. Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., Verónica Gago, and Suzy Hansen will address these questions in conversation with José Casanova.
Participants
Rev. Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J.
Rev. Albertus Bagus Laksana, S.J., is the rector of Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. A theologian, he has published widely in both English and Indonesian in areas including Christian-Muslim comparative theology, Asian theology, history of mission, religious pluralism, and encounters between religion and culture. Fr. Bagus has served as a visiting lecturer at Loyola Marymount University. He received his Ph.D. in theology from Boston College in 2011.
José Casanova
José Casanova (moderator) is a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he previously taught in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.
Verónica Gago
Verónica Gago, a professor of social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of San Martín, is a prominent political theorist and activist working on issues of feminism and the global political economy. Her most recent books include A Feminist Reading of Debt (2021, with Luci Cavallero), Feminist International (2020), and Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (2017). She is also a leader in Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos (Not One Women Less) movement as both a theorist and an activist.
Suzy Hansen
Suzy Hansen is an American writer and journalist who has spent more than a decade based in Istanbul, reporting for The New York Times Magazine and other publications. Her first book, Notes on a Foreign Country (2018), was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and received the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan Award. Her second book, From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan, was published in April 2026. She has taught writing at Princeton University, New York University, and Bard College.
Accessibility
Please email globaldialogues@georgetown.edu by October 9 with any accessibility requests. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill all requests made after this date.