About me
I am professor of sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IFCS-UFRJ) in Brazil. From 2005 till 2018, I taught at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP, formerly known as IUPERJ), also in Rio. Hailing originally from Flanders in Belgium, I have worked at many universities in Europe (University of Manchester, University for Humanist Studies in Utrecht, Brunel University in London, European University Institute in Florence, Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Ecole des Hautes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Universität Halle-Wittenberg), the United States (UCLA and Yale University) and Brazil (Federal University of Brasília, Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). I was a distinguished fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt (2022-2024) and am currently a fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS).
I defended my PhD at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1995 on theories of reification in German sociology, from Hegel to Habermas. Published in two volumes in French in 1997-1998, this reconstruction of critical theory is now available in an abbreviated version in English, Portuguese and Turkish.
Working at the intersection of philosophy and sociology, my main research interests are related to German social philosophy (Critical theory, hermeneutics and phenomenology), Anglo-Saxon social theory (critical realism, pragmatism and cultural sociology) and French sociological theory (post-Bourdieusian sociology). Intellectually, I am trying to link four different strands of critical theory. With Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth and Hartmut Rosa, I share a concern for justice, recognition and resonance. As co-founder of the Critical Realism Network at Yale, I am part of the critical realism movement. As co-editor of the new journal MAUSS International, I promote French anti-utilitarianism and convivialism across the world. And as a European expat in the Global South, I am bound to explore the limits of metropolitan theories and to systematically reformulate them to adapt them to “ex-centric” contexts. I am also doing fieldwork in India on agrarian distress and farmers’ suicide in the cotton and sugar plantations in Maharashtra. I am a card-carrying post-secular humanist.
I have published a book on the sociology of Georg Simmel (in French), a book on posthumanism and biocapitalism (in French), and a book on critical realism (in English) More recently, together with Alain Caillé, I published For a New Classic Sociology. A Proposition, followed by a Debate (in English and Portuguese). I signed a contract with Routledge for Anti-Utilitarian Social Theory. A Habermaussian Perspective. I am currently working on a book on political hermeneutics in which I analyse the political situation in Brazil (2013-2023) from the perspective of Karl Mannheim. The Ateliê de humanidades in Rio will publish my Collected Papers in three or possibly four volumes.
For a more extended description of my current research interests, I refer the reader to the webpage of Sociofilo (in Portuguese), the research lab I direct at IFCS-UFRJ.
I have also written an intellectual biography, a Memorial (in Portuguese), which is an essential piece when you apply for a job in Brazil.
Self-presentation at Innsbruck University (2023)
En français, j’ai aussi produit un CV Analytique
Curriculum Vitae
CV 2024 (English, 2024) (French, 2023)