Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, having served as Professor of Sociology and, at various times, Head of Department at Leeds from 1972 until his retirement in 1990. He was formerly of the University of Warsaw until 1968 and the University of Tel Aviv, and held several visiting professorships, in Australia and elsewhere, before coming to Leeds. He is now Professor Emeritus also at the University of Warsaw.

Zygmunt Bauman is known throughout the world for works such as "Legislators and Interpreters" (1987), "Modernity and the Holocaust" (1989), "Modernity and Ambivalence" (1991), "Postmodern Ethics" (1993), and "Liquid Modernity" (2000). He is the author of some 21 books in English and of numerous articles and reviews. His reputation, although already well-established by the 1970s in Western Europe and North America as well as throughout the then Eastern Bloc, grew at an especially rapid rate in the late 1980s, and today he is described variously as one of the twentieth century's great social theorists and the world's foremost sociologist of postmodernity. While heading the Department of Sociology, of which he was the first Professor, Bauman brought to the task of running things great qualities of intellectual leadership. Zygmunt Bauman was awarded the Amalfi European Prize in 1990 and the Adorno Prize in 1998.

The subject of fear, the theme of the WWS, has always been at the centre of Zygmunt Bauman's scientific interest although he specifically wrote about it his book Liquid Fear published only in 2006. In all his recent writings (The individualized society, Liquid Modernity, Globalization: the Human Consequences, Trust and Fear in the City, etc.) he identifies this feeling as an element inherent to post-modern society.

Fear is the "name that we give to uncertainty, to our lack of understanding of a threat, or of what we need to do to stop its progress or, if this is not in our power, at least to face it". It is the name that the individual gives to the subtle anguish that stems from his/her inability to master and direct the profound changes that our era is going through. At the beginning of the new millennium, post-modern society seemed squashed between two seemingly contradictory phenomena. On the one hand, the globalisation and increasing liberalization of markets, and the revolution in information and communication technology have produced standardized lifestyles and consumption. They have given rise to a whole series of relationships and human activities, highlighting interdependence that exists between societies, cultures and populations. But on the other hand, an "individualized" society has emerged, one that is focused on individual needs, experiences and solutions.

Globalisation, in particular, sets off processes which take on lives of their own, in ways that are often spontaneous and unpredictable, and thus uncontrollable. These processes impinge on individuals' lives, often in ways that do not allow them to choose or influence their progress. This therefore exposes them to endemic insecurity regarding their situation and the lack of certainty regarding what they must do. In this sense, today's society is portrayed, according to Bauman, as a "society of uncertainty", where the continuing transformation of economic, social and cultural structures have moved many of the reference points that people based themselves on in the past to build the foundations of their lives.

On the other hand, the social dimension of uncertainty triggers and encourages individualization in society. Although a result of the social situation, individuals are forced to experience its contradictions and deal with them on an individual level and mostly on their own, principally in private waysIt is almost as though the absence of personal security, the uncertainty of the future and the lack of trust in others and in institutions form an impediment to the willingness to take on the risks of collective action. And the consequence is that everyone back-pedals and stays in their own small closed world.

Because of this, the obsession for security is saturated with every kind of fear in the most modernized part of the world, which enjoys unprecedented wealth and comfort, . Bauman tries to make an inventory of these fears (fear of death, of globalisation, of not managing, etc.) in the attempt to discover their common origins and above all to examine ways to defuse them, explaining that humans are different from animals in that their fear "orients behaviour after having modified their perception of the world and the expectations which guide their choices".

The fears that can create conditions of continuous alarm and thus of fear, are of three main types: those which threaten the body and possessions, those of a general nature, regarding stability and trustworthiness of the social order, and those which undermine our identity and position in the world, exposing us to the risk of being humiliated and excluded at a social level. But, Bauman warns, the worst fear is a "liquid" fear, one without a clear direction or cause, a fear that follows us without a reason. This is the threat that we must face and that we glimpse everywhere, but cannot see clearly.

Furthermore fear is characterised by ubiquity because "it can come out of every corner or crack of our houses or planet", from the street, from people we know or from strangers, from nature, from other peoples often perceived as alien or hostile. It is a virus, which, in spreading itself multiplies , and the resulting impotence in dealing with it also multiplies accordingly. It is almost impossible to identify its primary source, as every time anyone thinks they have found it, they find themselves lost in a labyrinth of mirrors, which reflect the image of lone individuals back at themselves.

In capitalist society, furthermore, strategies for limiting fear reflect the social and class inequality of the society and are therefore differentiated according to income and status levels. This gives rise to another fear, especially for those who occupy socially disadvantaged positions, and that is the fear of being excluded. This explains the possible success of calming messages, even though threatening towards sources of fear that are identified from time to time, issued by political movements and based on religion, xenophobia or racism. Or they are based on policies which oscillate between prescriptive and normative solutions for individual behaviours established by the state on the one hand and a complete annulment of citizens' social rights on the other, which maintain that protection from a nearly exclusively private market economy is a private affair.

Notwithstanding this, the individualised society is not simply a fate that we cannot escape; it is also an obstacle we must face. Bauman offers no recipes for possible solutions, but sets out solely to "warn us of the enormous job that we will face for the greater part of this century in the hopes that humanity can take it to completion and that at the end, mankind will feel more secure and sure of itself than it did at the beginning".