Anya Topolski

Anya Topolski is an Associate Professor in Ethics and Political Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. She holds positions at both Radboud University and the University of Leuven, with a focus on critical philosophy of race and the race-religion constellation in Europe.

Topolski earned her BSc in Biochemistry (1999) and BA Honours in Philosophy (2000) from McGill University in Montreal. She completed her Master's in Continental Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude) in Belgium, specializing in Hannah Arendt's political thought, followed by a PhD in Philosophy from KU Leuven (2008), for which she received the Auschwitz Foundation Stichting Prize.

Her research centers on the intersection of race and religion in European contexts, with particular focus on antisemitism, islamophobia, and antizyganism. She has developed a framework for European critical philosophy of race that challenges American-centric critical race theory by examining how race intersects with religion in European contexts. Her work explores how European identity has been constructed through exclusionary practices targeting religious and racial minorities.

Topolski's publications reveal consistent engagement with Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and contemporary Jewish thought, while increasingly focusing on the race-religion constellation. Her recent work examines dehumanization processes, European witch hunts, and the complicity of Europe in Palestinian genocide, showing how race and religion are co-constituted categories in European thought and practice.

• Auschwitz Foundation Stichting Prize (2008)
• NWO Grant for Race-Religion Constellation Project
• Christine Mohrmann Grant
• NWO's advancing equity in academia through innovation grant (2023)

Topolski actively supervises PhD students and post-doctoral researchers, while also teaching courses on political philosophy, ethics, and diversity. She leads the Race-Religion Constellation Project and coordinates the Race, Religion, Secularism Network. Additionally, she co-founded SASSY (academicsexismstories.be) to address gender inequality in academia and has been vocal about Zwarte Piet as racism, demonstrating her commitment to challenging all forms of exclusion in European society.