Mervyn Horgan is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, both at the University of Guelph, Canada. His core theoretical and empirical concern is the making and breaking of solidarity in complex multicultural societies, and especially, how de/solidarizing processes are shaped by symbolic dimensions of collective life. This interest animates a range of ongoing research projects, including on: (1) renters’ experiences in the context of housing discourse that foregrounds ownership and investment, (2) encounters between strangers in everyday urban public spaces as sites of improvisation, (3) mass participation in sport as a means of inclusion and exclusion, and (4) relationships between processes of de/stigmatization and civil inclusion. He is co-editor (with Jeffrey C. Alexander) of The Civil Sphere in Canada (2025). (CCS Visiting Fellow in 2018-19, Faculty Fellow since 2019)
