Elzbieta Matynia is a Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies, and director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her research in the sociology of arts and politics focuses on democratic transformation, and more recently, retreats from democracy, in Eastern Europe and beyond. Her two recent books bring together the theater of politics, performance art, and citizens’ agency. An Uncanny Era (Yale University Press, 2014) presents post-revolutionary conversations between Europe’s most emblematic former dissidents: Czech playwright and president Václav Havel and Polish political thinker Adam Michnik. Her Performative Democracy (Paradigm, 2009) explores a potential in political life that easily escapes theorists: the indigenously inspired enacting of democracy by citizens. Written by one who experienced an emerging public sphere within pre-1989 Poland, it seeks to identify the conditions for performativity in public life. She is currently working on a book with the tentative title “Democracy after Violence.”