Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professorship

David Stark is a Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor and a sociologist at Columbia University who researches economic innovation and evaluation processes. He heads the Center on Organisational Innovation and uses a variety of research methods.

His work includes post-Soviet change and new forms of capitalism. In "The Sense of Dissonance", he shows how disagreement about values sponsors innovation. He led a research project on diversity and performance, sponsored by the European Research Council.

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Karin Knorr Cetina is O. Borchert Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Chicago and co-PI of a project ending date on Agentic Media at the University of Siegen. She researches science and technology studies, the sociology of finance, and social theory. Her works include Epistemic Cultures (2003), Takeover by Science (2020) and Synthetic Markets (2023). Together with Urs Bruegger, she published Global Microstructures (2007), which was awarded the ASA Theory Prize. She is currently researching artificially intelligent science and semi-autonomous social forms.

Awards:
Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professorship (2022), Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2021), George Sarton Medal (2019/20), Gutenberg Research Award (2017), Lifetime Achievement Award of the German Sociological Association (2016).

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Rudolf Stichweh was Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University in 2020/21. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, his planned stay was postponed until autumn 2020. He led the doctoral seminar Inequality and Asymmetrical Dependency: A Global Perspective and gave a university lecture on Functional Differentiation and World Society on 10 November 2021.

Stichweh is Senior Professor of Sociology at the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft and the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies (Cluster(s) of Excellence) at the University of Bonn. He is also head of the Comparative Research on Democracies department at the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft.

Eva Illouz from Hebrew University in Jerusalem is this year's Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Sociology in Bielefeld. She has been Professor of Sociology and Anthropology since 2006. Her focus of research includes cultural sociology, sociology of emotions, criticism of capitalism and feminist theory.

During her stay in Bielefeld (19 June - July, as well as two weeks in October), she will be giving a public lecture on 19 June (6 pm, H1): "What is Capitalist Subjectivity?" She will also lead the doctoral seminar "The Paradoxes of Capitalism and Emotions" at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology).

Chris Thornhill is Professor of Law at the University of Manchester. His research is at the intersection of law, sociology, politics and history. He is a leader in the sociology of constitutional law and democracy and has published numerous works that have shaped the field. His work examines the social emergence of constitutions and the conditions of democratic legitimacy, particularly in post-authoritarian and colonial societies. He also researches the global legal system and the effects of international norms.

As Niklas Luhmann visiting professor, he will give a public lecture on The Sociology of Law and Global Sociology on 13 June.

Richard Münch was Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Sociology and the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology from 28 November 2016 to 5 February 2017. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Bamberg and Senior Professor at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen. His research ranges from social and action theory to analysing global developments in education and science. He has published numerous works on social change, communication, globalisation and academic capitalism. On 14 December 2016, he gave a public lecture on international educational competition. He also led a graduate seminar on the university in academic capitalism and a colloquium on dissertation projects.

Elena Esposito was Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor in Bielefeld from December 2015 to January 2016. She is a professor of sociology at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia and completed her doctorate in Bielefeld under Niklas Luhmann. She has held visiting professorships at Columbia University, Meiji University and the Humboldt Foundation, among others. Her research is based on systems theory and deals with social time management processes, memory, forgetting, fashion, financial markets and uncertainty. Current news projects deal with digital forgetting, algorithmic communication and rankings.

On 9 December, she gave the lecture Artificial Communication: The Production of Contingency by Algorithms and led a graduate seminar on systems theory and a masterclass for doctoral students.

Alejandro Portes was Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor in Bielefeld from 4 October to 6 December. He is a professor of sociology at Princeton and a research professor in Miami. He also founded the Centre for Migration and Development in Princeton. His research covers migration, economic sociology and national development. He has published 36 books, including City on the Edge and Immigrant America. His current news focuses on the adaptation of second generation migrants, institutions and migration in the health care system.

During his residency, he led a seminar on the economic sociology of migration and gave a public lecture on 19 November: Immigration, Transnationalism and Development: The State of the Question.

Yasemin Soysal holds a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University and was Assistant Professor and John Loeb Associate Professor at Harvard University. She now teaches at the University of Essex. Her research focusses on the development of the nation state and citizenship in Europe. She is currently working on two projects: a comparative study of the concept of the "good citizen" in Europe and East Asia and a study of the life courses of young people with and without a migration background in Spain.

She has been a visiting professor and fellow at numerous prestigious institutions and was president of the European Sociological Association.

Saskia Sassen is Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Co-Chair of the Committee on Global Thought. Her research focuses on globalisation, cities and digital transformation. Her best-known works include The Paradox of the National (Suhrkamp, 2008) and The Global City. Her books have been translated into 21 languages. She advises international organisations and writes regularly for The Guardian, New York Times and Le Monde Diplomatique.
During her stay in Bielefeld, she will give a weekly seminar at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology and two public lectures:

1. Territory, Authority, Rights: Emerging Global Assemblages (May 11)
2. Ungoverned Territories and Informal Jurisdictions (planned for June 22)

Ulrich Oevermann will hold the Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professorship in Bielefeld from 1 December 2009 to 5 February 2010. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Frankfurt/Main and has been one of the most important sociologists in Germany since the 1960s.

Oevermann developed objective hermeneutics, a method of qualitative social research that reconstructs social and linguistic selectivity. His research combines sociolinguistics, structuralism and social theory. His concepts of routine and crisis are central to understanding social dynamics.

During his stay, he will hold courses and a public lecture.

This year's holder of the Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professorship is the Trier sociologist Alois Hahn. He was awarded his doctorate in Frankfurt am Main in 1967 with a thesis on the social conditionality of attitudes towards death and dying and habilitated in Tübingen in 1973 with a thesis on "Systems of meaningful knowledge". Since 1974, he has been a full professor of General Sociology at the University of Trier, where he researches and teaches on a wide range of topics. His work focuses on the sociology of religion and culture, the sociology of thanatos and, more recently, on research into inclusion and exclusion.
Alois Hahn has held numerous visiting professorships, including at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris in 1987/88 and at the Université de Strasbourg in 2007. In the academic year 2005/06, he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
The work programme of the Luhmann Memorial Professorship revolves around reflections on the prehistory of social science thought.

Prof Nils Brunsson holds the City of Stockholm Chair in Management at the Stockholm School of Economics. He has published over 20 books and numerous articles on organisations. His research covers decision-making processes, administrative reforms and standardisation. He is currently working on rule-making and regulation. His latest book in English is Mechanisms of Hope. Maintaining the dream of rationality in organisations.

During his time at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University, he leads a graduate seminar on "Institutional Aspects of Organisations" every Tuesday from 10 am to 1 pm (room T4-110). On 9 May, he will also be giving a public lecture and organising a workshop on his book Mechanisms of Hope.

Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor 2022: Prof John W. Meyer

From 18 April to 20 June, Professor John W. Meyer (Department of Sociology and International Studies Institute, Stanford University) will be the Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor at Bielefeld University.

John Meyer received his doctorate from Columbia University, New York, taught there for several years and later became Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, where he is now Professor Emeritus.

His research focuses on the global spread of modern institutions and their impact on nation states and societies. In particular, he investigates the spread of scientific activity and the standardisation of educational systems. Meyer has made important contributions to organisational theory (e.g. Organizational Environments, with W. R. Scott, Sage 1983) and to the sociology of education and helped develop the school of thought now known as neoinstitutionalism.

Since the late 1970s, he has been researching the influence of world society on nation states (e.g. Institutional Structure, Sage 1987). He is currently working on a study of global science and its impact on national societies(Science in the Modern World Polity, Stanford 2003) and on the ascending order of global human rights regimes.

During his time at the Faculty of Sociology, John W. Meyer will leada weekly graduate seminar on the impact of macro-sociocultural environmental conditions on societies, organisations and individuals. He will also give two public lectures on 26 April and 24 May.

Seminar: Sociological Institutional Theory

• Influence of modern macro-sociocultural environments on societies, organisations and individuals
• Focus on institutionalism, in particular on environmental influences on the formation of identity and the structure of actors
• Theoretical and empirical studies on global society and its effects

Public lectures

• Institutional theories in sociology
• The structure of a world society

Most researchers today are investigating very specialised, narrowly defined issues. Even in sociology, only very few ask about comprehensive and general contexts. One of these few is Professor Harrison C. White from the renowned Columbia University in New York, who is currently spending two months as the first Niklas Luhmann Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University. Harrison C. White (*1930) is generally regarded as one of the founders and important representatives of network theory. He is trained as a mathematician and sociologist. In many of his works, he has dealt with the modelling and mathematical reconstruction of social networks. Like Niklas Luhmann, White emphasises the autonomy of this social reality in his work. The social is not reducible to individuals. It is social structures or networks that make the development of individual identities possible in the first place. White's works are dedicated to analysing such social networks. Where, when and how does interdependence consolidate? Where, when and how do couplings and decouplings arise in social interaction? White's analyses are based on the assumption that social structures form and control the space of possibility in which identity can emerge and develop. "Identity and control" is the title of his main theoretical work, which was published in 1992. (more)