John-Stewart Gordon Keynote Speaker

Professor John-Stewart Gordon is a German-British philosopher (Kaunas University of Technology) and strategic thinker who analyses how power, technology, and moral responsibility are reshaping the global order. An experienced keynote speaker and organizer of numerous international academic events, he offers audiences a rigorous, research-backed perspective on the crises defining our time.

John-Stewart has a truly global academic footprint. He was Visiting Professor at leading institutions including the University of Oxford (UK), Maynooth University (Ireland), the University of Toronto (Canada), Queen’s University (Canada), the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), and Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia).

His research leadership is extensive. He is the author of over 100 publications, including 20 single-authored and (co-)edited books, and served as Principal Investigator for the major EU-funded project on Future Law, Ethics, and Smart Technologies, exploring the moral boundaries of innovation and regulation. From 2010 to 2016 he was Co-Director of the Hans Jonas Institute, helping to establish it as a leading international center for research and teaching on the work of Hans Jonas.

Drawing also on his training as a mediator, he combines deep scholarly expertise with a practical, conflict-sensitive analytical lens. Whether discussing geopolitics, global leadership, the ethics of AI, or the future of work and democracy, he provides the normative judgment and conceptual clarity leaders need to assess risk in a fragmented world and act accordingly.

Trained in history, he places contemporary conflicts, institutional crises, and power rivalries within longer trajectories of geopolitical competition, regime change, and technological disruption, allowing decision-makers to distinguish durable structural shifts in the international order from short-term political volatility and crisis dynamics.

He lives on the Curonian Spit on the Baltic Sea—one of the most beautiful and unspoiled coastal landscapes in Europe—where the stark dunes, forests, and shifting light provide a quiet counterpoint to his academic work.