Short biography

Educated in economics, political science and sociology in Hamburg, London and Berlin, I have been academically active in various European countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Norway, as well as in the USA and South Africa, before coming to Barcelona. I was Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Professor of Sociology at the U of Warwick and the U of Trento as well as Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute in Florence. Furthermore, I held visiting positions at Université de Paris 8 (2011); U catholique de Louvain-la-neuve (2009-10); U of Cape Town (2009-10); U of Bergen (2001); Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1998; 2001); U of California at Berkeley (1996; 1997); Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1990-91); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris (1994), among others.

Research interests

Located in the areas of comparative historical and political sociology, social and political theory, and the sociology of the social sciences, my research is focused on the identification and comparative analysis of different forms of social and political modernity and of the historical trajectories of modern societies. Initially, I applied it in a comparative political sociology of European national societies. Subsequently, I analyzed the process of European integration by reviewing both the institutional transformations of European societies over the past two centuries and the transformations in the self-understanding of Europe. "Modernity" then does not appear as a single and unique model of social organization, but rather emerges as variable interpretations of basic human problématiques in the light of specific historical experiences. Currently, a key task of social analysis is the comparative analysis of plural forms of modernity in their global context.

Key words

political sociology, social and political theory, comparative-historical sociology, European studies, sociology of the sciences