Ulrich Beck

Ulrich Beck (Germany) is Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and has been the British Journal of Sociology LSE Centennial Professor in the Department of Sociology since 1997. He has received Honorary Doctorates from several European universities. He currently studies modernization, ecological problems, individualization, and globalization. His most recent research activities include a long-term empirical study of the sociological and political implications of 'reflexive modernization', which explores the complexities and uncertainties of the process of transformation from first to second modernity. Specifically he is working on unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda. He has contributed a number of significant new concepts in international sociology, including 'risk society', 'individualization', 'reflexive modernization', 'methodological nationalism' and 'methodological cosmopolitanism'. 

Since 1992 he has been professor for sociology and director of the Institute for Sociology of Munich University. He is also the British Journal of Sociology Professor at the London School of Economics and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard. Since 2013 he has been the Principal Investigator of the ERC project: “Methodological Cosmopolitanism – In the Laboratory of Climate Change”. He is married to the German sociology professor Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. He has received many international prizes and honors. 

Since 1999 he has been the speaker of the DFG research programme on 'Reflexive Modernity'. He is the editor of the sociological journal Soziale Welt (since 1980) , editor of the book series on Second Modernity at Suhrkamp, the author of some 150 articles in reviewed journals, and author or editor of more than 40 books, translated in more than 40 languages including: Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (1992); (co-author with Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash): Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (1994); (with E. Beck-Gernsheim): The Normal Chaos of Love (1995); Ecological Enlightenment (1995); Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (1995); The Reinvention of Politics. Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order (1996); Democracy without Enemies (1998); World Risk Society (1998); What Is Globalization? (1999); The Brave New World of Work (2000); (with Barbara Adam and Joost Van Loon): The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory (2000); (with E. Beck-Gernsheim): Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences (2000, 2002); (with Johannes Willms): Conversations with Ulrich Beck (2003); Power in the Global Age (2005); Cosmopolitan Vision (2006); (with Natan Sznaider): "Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences", in: British Journal of Sociology, 57,1 (2006): 1-23; (with Edgar Grande): Cosmopolitan Europe (2007); World at Risk (2008); (with Edgar Grande): "Varieties of Second Modernity – Extra-European and European Experiences and Perspectives", in: British Journal of Sociology, 6/3 (2010).

www.ulrichbeck.net-build.net