Aspen Institute España will host the first edition of the Aspen – Fundación Balia Seminar on «Leadership and Values for Rising Generations» which includes three two-hour debate sessions on November 5, 12 y 19. The Seminar will be moderated by Carlos Pitillas, Professor de Psychology and Researcher at the Ponticia Comillas University (Madrid) and Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Professor of Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, both Aspen España Fellows. The seminar will bring together a group of 20 to 22 participants selected by Fundación Balia.
The group selected to participate in the program includes young people who have taken part in the “Generación Balia” program—youth aged 16 to 22, most of whom are at risk of social exclusion. Fundación Balia’s programs aim to support and guide them through vocational and professional orientation, helping them discover their motivations, talents, and callings, and providing the necessary support to achieve their goals and successfully enter the workforce.
For this Aspen Institute España program, the diversity of perspectives will enrich the conversation and ensure that the discussion moves beyond technicalities, opening up to fundamental issues that all young people must face, each from their own unique standpoint.
Carlos Pitillas
He holds a PhD in Psychology and has been working since 2011 as a professor and researcher in the Department of Psychology and at the University Institute for the Family at Universidad Pontificia Comillas. In addition, Carlos Pitillas has been practicing individual psychotherapy with children, adolescents, and adults since 2006. His current teaching at Universidad Pontificia Comillas covers developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and child and adolescent psychotherapy. Carlos Pitillas has also delivered specialized training for professionals in child protection and psychotherapy through various institutions. Some of these interests have taken shape in Professor Pitillas’s scientific and outreach publications, including the books “Walking in Their Footsteps: Bonds, Trauma and Human Development” (Desclée de Brouwer, forthcoming), “The Inherited Wound: Understanding and Addressing the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma” (Desclée de Brouwer, 2021), “First Alliance: Strengthening Early Bonds” (Gedisa, 2018), and “I Am What Haunts Me: Horror as a Fiction of Trauma”(co-authored with Ismael Martínez Biurrun, Dilatando Mentes, 2021), along with numerous scientific articles and book chapters published both nationally and internationally.
Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui
He is professor of Greek Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid and Aspen España Fellow. He holds a degree in Law and Classics, a Ph.D. in Classical Philology and History of Religions, and trained as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute, Harvard, Oxford (Christ Church), Zurich and Bologna (Royal College of Spain). He is the author of several studies on the philosophy, literature, politics, and religion of ancient Greece, and on the reception of classical culture in early Christianity and modernity. His latest books are El pensamiento narrativo (Sílex, 2023, with Fernando Ariza) and Catábasis: el viaje infernal en la Antigüedad (Alianza, 2023). He has been a technical advisor at the Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid (2012-2014). He is an Aspen España Fellow, in whose seminars he collaborates as a participant and moderator.
