Albena Azmanova is associate professor in political and social thought at the University of Kent at Brussels. After participating in the dissident movements, in 1987-1990, that brought down the communist regime in her native Bulgaria, she became a dissident again as she took a critical stance against the post-communist regimes (which she has described in her writings as "dictatorships of freedom"). Azmanova subsequently studied European law at the University of Strasbourg, did her doctoral studies at the New School for Social Research in New York, and taught political theory at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris. Her publications on the transformation of capitalism aim at re-engaging critical social theory with the critique of political economy. Her most recent book – The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment (Columbia University Press, 2012) affects a pragmatic turn within theories of deliberative democracy. She was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley from January to April 2015.