Theory, Culture & Society Summer School 2023 Programme

Speakers

Timon Beyes is Professor of Sociology of Organization and Culture at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is a founding director of Leuphana University's Centre for Digital Cultures, director of the Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organization (ISCO) and program director of the MA program in Culture and Organization. He is also affiliated with the Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. Timon has a background in Sociology and Management Studies and has done his doctoral and post-doctoral research at the Institute of Sociology and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. From 2012-2017, he was full professor at Copenhagen Business School's Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy. He has held visiting professorships at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Université Paris Dauphine. Timon is interested in cultural theories of organization, and in understanding organization as cultural force. Among other things, he is working on the spatialities, technologies, atmospheres, colours and publics of organizing. He is the author of the forthcoming Organizing Color: Toward a Chromatics of the Social (Stanford University Press, 2024). Recent publications include Proof of Stake: Technological Claims (Lenz Press, 2023), ‘Staying with the secret’ (Theory, Culture & Society 39(4)), ‘Ten Theses on Technology and Organization’ (Organization Studies 43(7)), ‘‘How art becomes organization’ (Organization Studies 43(2)).

Silke van Dyk is Professor of Political Sociology at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena in Germany and Co-Speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre “Structural Change of Property”, funded by the German Research Foundation. Her research focuses on the following areas: Sociology of the Welfare State; Social Inequality and Property Relations; Political Sociology; Populism and Democracy; Ageing Studies. The latest book she published (with Tine Haubner) is Community-Kapitalismus (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition). Her contributions in English include: ‘Post-Truth, the Future of Democracy and the Public Sphere’, Theory, Culture & Society, 39(4) 2022; “Post-wage politics and the rise of Community Capitalism”, Work, Employment and Society, 32 (3), 2018. ‘The othering of old age: Insights from Postcolonial Studies,’  Journal of Aging Studies 39, 2016.

Kornelia Hahn is Professor for General Sociology and Sociological Theory and head of the Department Sociology and Social Geography, University of Salzburg.  Her research agenda focuses on cultural dynamics through an interpretive approach that combines material, historical and semiotic perspectives, theorising these dynamics particularly in the areas of (digital) communication, intimate relationships, the political public sphere, and the embodied service and fashion/garment industries.   Prof Hahn teaches Sociological Theory, Sociology of Culture, Media, Fashion, Body, Intimate Relationship and Interpretive Methods. She has been co-director of the Doctoral Schools Art & Public Sphere (2010 – 2014) and On the Move: people, objects, signs (2016 – 2021). She is co-editor of the book series Media Cultures in the Digital Age (Springer), and co-coordinator of the Research Network 29 Social Theory of the European Sociological Association. Her recent monograph: Social Digitalisation. Persistent Transformations Beyond Digital Technology (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) .

Douglas Kellner is Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He earned his B.A. from Doane College, studied in Copenhagen, Tubingen, and Paris, and is the author of many books on social theory, politics, history, and culture, including Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism and Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film. He coauthored with Michael Ryan, Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity and Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond; with Steven Best, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, Television and the Crisis of Democracy, The Persian Gulf TV War, Media Culture, and The Postmodern Turn.

Robert van Krieken is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney, as well as Adjunct Professor at University College Dublin, and at the University of Tasmania. His work as an historical sociologist draws on a wide range of social theorists, including Marx, Weber, Luhmann and Foucault as well as Norbert Elias, and his research interests include the sociology of law, criminology, cultural genocide, childhood, celebrity, and processes of civilization and decivilization. He has published in a broad range of journals, including Theory & Society, Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Modern Law Review, Theory, Culture & Society, Journal of Sociology, Patterns of Prejudice and the Annual Review of Law & Social Science, and he has translated works from Dutch and German, His books include Norbert Elias (1998) and Celebrity Society: The Struggle for Attention (2019), and his current writing projects include a book on the concept of ressentiment and how it can be used to understand the current ‘age of anger’, and another on civilization and law.

Shin Mizukoshi is a professor of media studies at the Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan. He has been working on critical and practical media studies to defamiliarize and recombine the relationship between media and people with a design-oriented mind. Mizukoshi’s recent publications include Media no Seisei: Amerika Rajio no Doutaishi (The Formation of Media: A Dynamic History of American Broadcasting) 2023, Shinban Media Ron (Media Studies New Edition) 2022, “Media Landscape without Apple: A Workshop for Critical Awareness of Alternative Media Infrastructure” The Journal of Education, 3(2), 2020. He is the research division deputy director of INSTeM: Inter-field Network for Science, Technology, and Media Studies、and the editor of a bilingual independent magazine, 5: Designing Media Ecology. https://shinmizukoshi.net

Yoshitaka Mōri is Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of Global Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts. Born in 1963. BA in Economics (Kyoto University), MA in Media and Communications and Ph.D. in Sociology (Goldsmiths College, University of London). His research interests are postmodern culture, media, contemporary art, the city, and transnationalism. He has initiated Post-Media Research Network (PMRN) and organized a series of workshops and symposiums and is a director of a multilingual web project, Relations: A Project for Criticism and Media Practices as part of Tokyo Biennale. His publications include, Banksy, Kobunsha, 2019, Sutorīt no Shisō (The Philosophy in the Streets) NHK Publications, 2009 and Popyurā Ongaku to Shihonshugi (Popular Music and Capitalism) Serica Shobō, 2005/2012 (in Japanese) and “J-Pop Goes the World: A New Global Fandom in the Age of Digital Media”, Made in Japan: Studies in Popular Music, T. Mitsui (Ed), Routledge, 2014, and “New Collectivism, Participation and Politics after the East Japan Great Earthquake”, World Art, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 5/2, 2015, “Culture=Politics: The Emergence of New Cultural Forms of Protest in the Age of Freeter”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol.6 No.1, Routledge: London, pp.17-29, 2005 (in English).

Motti Regev is Professor of Sociology (Emeritus) at the Open University of Israel. He has worked primarily on popular music, specializing in pop-rock music and cultural globalization. In recent years his focus expanded to a general look at cultural cosmopolitanism and embodied knowledge. His work combines a Bourdieusian perspective with cultural globalization theory. His books include Popular Music and National Culture in Israel (with Edwin Seroussi; University of California Press, 2004), Pop-Rock Music: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism in Late Modernity (Polity, 2013) and Sociology of Culture: A General Introduction (in Hebrew. Open University of Israel, 2013). His work on pop-rock and cultural globalization has appeared in the journals Theory, Culture & Society, Poetics, Popular Music, European Journal of Social Theory, Cultural Sociology, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of World Popular Music and Youth and Globalization, as well as in numerous edited volumes.

Martin Seeliger is the co-director of the Institute for Labor and the Economy at the University of Bremen and leads a research group on institutional change and the political economy of work. He has worked on topics from the field of industrial relations, political sociology and cultural studies. Recently published: Seeliger, Martin; Sevignani, Sebastian (2022): A new Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere? Special Issue of Theory, Culture & Society. Ewen, Janis; Nies, Sarah; Seeliger, Martin (Hg.) (2022): Sozialpartnerschaft im digitalisierten Kapitalismus. Hat der institutionalisierte Klassenkonflikt eine Zukunft? Basel/Weinheim: Beltz; Seeliger, Martin; Kiess, Johannes (2022): Does the European Left have to choose between the nation-state and internationalism? Some considerations following Richard Rorty. In: Philosophy & Social Criticism.

Sebastian Sevagani is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Since January 2021 he is (together with Prof. Dr. Tilman Reitz) principal investigator of the DFG funded research project on “Intellectual property: social embeddedness and functional equivalents”. His research interests are Critical Theory, Critical Political Economy, Media Sociology, Social Media and Digital Labour.

Natan Sznaider is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo in Israel. His research interests over the last few years have centered on giving a sociological account at processes of trauma and victimhood. Sznaider publishes mainly in English and in German. His books include The Compassionate Temperament: Care and Cruelty in Modern Society, Rowman & Littlefield, Bolder, Co. 2000), Erinnerung im Globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2001 (co-authored with Daniel Levy), expanded and translated into English and as The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Temple University Press, 2006; A volume on cosmopolitan politics and human rights, “Human Rights and Memory”, was published in 2009 together with Daniel Levy. In 2011 he published Jewish Memory and the Cosmopolitan Order with Polity Press. Together with Alejandro Baer, Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Area, Routledge, 2016. The same year he published an epistolary debate with the Austrian writer Doron Rabinovici: Herzl Reloaded. Kein Märchen, Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2016. In 2017, he published a sociological study on Israel: Gesellschaften in Israel. Eine Einführung in Zehn Bildern, Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2017 and in 2019 he co-edited a volume on Antisemitism: Neuer Antisemitism? Fortsetzung einer Globalen Debatte, Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2019. His last book is Fluchtpunkte der Erinnerung (Vanishing Points of Memory: On the Presence of Holocaust and Colonialism), published by Hanser in 2022.

Tiziana Terranova is Professor in the Sociology of Culture and Communications at L’Orientale University. Her research interests concern the study of information networks, digital media and the more general intersection between science, technology, communication and culture from the perspective of critical theory and cultural studies. She is the author of Corpi nella rete (Costa e Nolan 1996), Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age (Pluto Press,2004); After the Internet: Digital Networks between Capital and the Common (Semiotexte/MIT Press, 2022) and the forthcoming Technosocial (Minnesota University Press). Amongst her last publications are the special issue of the e-flux journal Recursive Colonialism, Speculative Computation and the Technosocial (2021).

Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Humanities & Social Sciences Institute, a Fellow of the PM Glynn Institute at the Australian Catholic University, and a Research Fellow of the Edward Cadbury Centre at Birmingham University in the UK. He has worked in many universities in seven different societies since the 1960s, most notably in the University of Cambridge, Wellesley College, and City University of New York. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Professorial Fellow at Bielefeld University in 1987-8 and won the Max Planck award in the social sciences in 2015 which was held at Potsdam University. He was the founding editor of Citizenship Studies and The Journal of Classical Sociology. He worked closely with Mike Featherstone on Theory, Culture & Society, and Body & Society. His research and publications fall under the sociology of religion with special reference to Islam, the body and vulnerability, the sociology of citizenship and human rights, and sociological theory. His recent publications include Understanding Islam; Positions of Knowledge (2023) Edinburgh University Press and A Theory of Catastrophe (2023) De Gruyter. For relaxation he walks his dog along the beach at 6.30 am and starts drinking Australia red wine at 6.30 pm.

Shunya Yoshimi is professor at Kokugakuin University and chairman of the University of Tokyo Press. He has been actively involved in urban studies and media studies from a performative approach, playing a central role in Japan's cultural studies. He has a long history of teaching at the University of Tokyo and has held various positions such as Dean of the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, Director of Center for Research and Development of Higher Education, and Vice President in University of Tokyo. Currently, he serves as President of Japan Society for Digital Archive and Chairman of Tokyo Cultural Heritage Alliance. His major works include Dramaturgy of City (Koubundo), Politics of Exposition (Chuko-Shinsho), Capitalism of Voice (Kodansha), Pro-America/Anti-America (Iwanami-Shinsho), Post-Postwar Society (Iwanami Shimbun), Atoms for Dream  (Chikuma-Shinsho), Out America (Kobundo), Geopolitics of Visual City (Iwanami Shoten), Scales of History (Shueisha-Shinsho), Living in Trump's America (Iwanami-Shinsho), After Cultural Studies (Seidosha), Olympics and Postwar Japan (Kawade Shobo Shinsha), Aerial Bombing (Iwanami Shoten), Tokyo as Loser (Chikuma Shobo), e. 

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Theory Culture & Society Editors and Associates

Gabriel O. Apata is an independent scholar and a Review Editor of Theory, Culture & Society. He studied philosophy and his PhD was in Cultural Studies. His interests cut across the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, race, African and post-colonial studies, religion and aesthetics. He has published widely on these subject areas. His aim is to examine and to reconcile the Western and African cultural and philosophical traditions, to see where they intersect and diverge and also to see the implications of this convergence and divergence for the black and African realities.

Mike Featherstone is a Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is founding editor of the journal Theory, Culture & Society and the Theory, Culture & Society Book Series. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Body & Society. Author of Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (2nd edition 2007) and Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (1995). He is editor of over a dozen books and author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on social and cultural theory, consumer culture, globalization, ageing and the body.

Sunil Manghani is Professor of Theory, Practice & Critique at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton (UK). He is the editor of the Journal of Visual Art Practice and managing editor of Theory, Culture & Society, and is a fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. His books include Image Studies (2013),  (2019), and Barthes/Burgin (2016).

Tomoko Tamari is a senior lecturer in sociology at the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths, University of London. She is managing editor of Body & Society. She is currently working on the following areas: Body Image and Technology; Olympic Cities and Architecture; AI and Society; Animation and Human Perception, which will be discussed in her forthcoming edited book entitled Human Perception and Digital Information Technologies: Animation, the Body and Affect (Bristol University Press).

Matthias Weiser
For details see below under AAU Summer School Faculty.

Rainer Winter
For details see below under AAU Summer School Faculty.

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AAU Summer School Faculty

Cristina Beretta is Associate Professor at the Department of Slavic Studies. Her research in the field of Slavic Literary Studies focuses on the interplay of Literature, Ideology, and (Gender-)Norms. She has been Guest Professor at the University of Heidelberg and Fellow at the University of Sarajevo. She is co-chief editor of the Journal Colloquium: New Philologies and Scientific Director of the Summer School Bovec in Slovenia. She is the author of Das erotische Unbehagen in der russischen Literatur um 1900 (Universitätsverlag Winter 2011), Krieg, Literatur und Agency. Postjugoslawische Literatur und das nationalistische (Geschlechter)Imaginäre (upcoming) and co-editor of Manifest|o Alpe-Adria. Stimmen für eine Europa-Region des Friedens und Wohlstands | Voci per una regione europea di pace e prosperità | Glasovi za evropsko regijo miru in blagostanja (Edition PEN 2020) and Nationalism.Language.Politics. (Un)doing Nationalism and Resistance (2019)

Artur R. Boelderl is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Senior Scientist (~ Reader) at the Robert Musil Institute for Literary Research / Carinthian Literary Archives. He has been Visiting Professor at the universities of Graz and Linz and at Trinity College Dublin. His work focuses on the Philosophy of the 20th Century and the Present, esp. Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Deconstruction, Philosophy of/and Psychoanalysis, Literary Theory and Didactics (esp. online), and Philosophical Natology. He is the author of Alchimie, Postmoderne und der arme Hölderlin (Passagen 1995), Literarische Hermetik (Parerga 1997), Georges Bataille (Parerga 2005), Von Geburts wegen (Königshausen & Neumann 2006), Musil – diskursweise (Vorwerk 8, in print), (co-)editor of numerous books, most recently Von den Schwierigkeiten, zur Welt zu kommen (with Peter Widmer, Psychosozial 2021), translator of several books and articles, most notably by Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, and (co-)curator of Musil Online.

Jörg-Uwe Nieland is Senior Scientist at the Department of Media and Communications. He is founding member of the research group Media Sport and Sports Communication in the German Association for Journalism and Communication Studies (DGPuK) and board member of the Initiative Nachrichtenaufklärung e.V. His work focuses on Mediatization, Sports Communication and Sports Politics, Political Communication, Media Policy and Popular Culture. He is the author of Pop und Politik (Herbert von Halem 2009) and co-editor of Die Entstehung des Mediensports (Herbert von Halem 2020), Bewegungskulturen im Wandel (Transcript 2016), Die Sexualisierung des Sports in den Medien (Herbert von Halem 2011) and most recently co-author of “Mediatization in Times of Pandemic”, in: Communication & Sport 10(5): 891-912. 

Martin Weiß is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy. His work focuses on Phenomenology, Italian Philosophy and Ethics. He is the author of Gianni Vattimo. Einführung, 3rd edition (Passagen 2012) and co-editor of An der Grenze. Die biotechnologische Überwachung von Migration (Campus 2016), Suspect Families. DNA Analysis, Family Reunification and Immigration Policies (Ashgate 2015), Ethics, Society, Politics. Proceedings of the 35th International Wittgenstein Symposium (De Gruyter 2013), Bios und Zoë. Die menschliche Natur im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Suhrkamp 2009).

Matthias Wieser is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communications. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Tübingen and Fellow at Concordia University Montreal and the University of Western Sydney. His research focus is on cultural media studies, science and technology studies, and social theory. He is the author of Das Netzwerk von Bruno Latour (Transcript 2012) and co-editor of Schlüsselwerke der Science & Technology Studies (Springer VS 2014), (2021) Materialitäten des Digitalen (Medien Journal 45/1), Medien als Dinge denken (Medien Journal 44/4), Medienkultur als kritische Gesellschaftsanalyse (Herbert von Halem 2020).

Rainer Winter is Professor of Media and Cultural Theory at the Institute for Media and Communications, Alpen-Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt on Lake Woerther (Austria). His background is in sociology, psychology and philosophy. He is the (co-)author and (co-)editor of more than 30 books, including “Handbuch Filmsoziologie. Three Volumes” (2022), “(Mis)Understanding Political Participation. Digital Practices, New Forms of Participation and the Renewal of Democracy” (2018), “Handbuch Mediensoziologie” (2018), “Widerstand im Netz. Zur Herausbildung einer transnationalen Öffentlichkeit durch netzbasierte Kommunikation” (2010) and “Global America? The Cultural Consequences of Globalization“ (2003). He is also (co-)editor of four book series of more than 70 books.