Yoshie Yanagihara, Tokyo Denki University, JapanYoshie Yanagihara is a Professor at Tokyo Denki University, School of Science & Engineering. She was a visiting fellow at Yale Macmillan Center in the academic year 2011-2012 granted by scholarship through The University of Tokyo “Todai-Yale Initiative”. During her time at Yale Macmillan Center, she began to study cultural sociology and the civil sphere theory. She is engaged in bioethical issues focusing on cultural structures which intercedes applying reproductive technologies and recognition of women’s bodies. Her latest research project examines discourses concerning surrogacy in mass media using a theoretical framework of Biopolitics and Civil Sphere Theory. In 2017, she was a participant in The Civil Sphere in East Asia Project, organized by Jeffry Alexander and David A. Palmer. For this project she contributed a paper “What Constitutes ‘Autonomy’ in the Japanese Civil Sphere? : The Struggle over Surrogacy” (2019, Cambridge University Press). Her major paper in the academic arena of bioethics is titled “Reconstructing feminist perspectives of women’s bodies using a globalized view: The changing surrogacy market in Japan” published in Bioethics (2020). Her latest article “The practice of surrogacy as a phenomenon of ‘bare life’: An analysis of the Japanese case applying Agamben’s theory “, Current Sociology (2021) earned her recognition by the International Sociological Association, and she was awarded “Sociologist of the Month” by them in September 2021. She is currently preparing for a book publication which will be a compilation of her articles written over past ten years. It is tentatively titled “Biopolitics of Surrogacy: examination of knowledge and power analyzing in cultural sociology” (In Japanese). (Visiting Fellow - April, 2023 to April, 2024) |
Dmitry Kurakin, HSE University, RussiaDmitry Kurakin is a Professor and a Lead Research Fellow at the National Research University ‘Higher School of Economics’ (HSE University). He founded and directed the Moscow Centre for Cultural Sociology. He is a social theorist and a cultural sociologist. His primary interests include theories of the sacred, the Durkheimian tradition, the emotional dimension of culture, culture and cognition, and temporality. Devoted to theory-driven research, he contributes to these areas through extensive empirical studies in a broad range of fields, such as: the sociology of inequality, education, and choice; the sociology of perception, with special regard to the mechanisms of emotional attraction/repulsion within the genre of mystery; the sociology of the body and its ritual-like alterations, and other issues. He has published in such journals as European Sociological Review, Sociology of Education, American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Cultural Sociology, Journal of Classical Sociology, and others, as well as Russian academic journals. He edited and wrote the introduction to the Russian translation of ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.’ Dmitry has been a long-time proponent of the Strong Program in cultural sociology, and a CCS faculty fellow since 2010. Currently, he is developing a cultural sociological theory of cathexis, one that advances the strong program while also connecting it to new developments in the sociology of culture and cognition. (Visiting Faculty Fellow - September, 2023 to September, 2024) |
Steven Arrigg Koh, Boston University School of LawSteven Arrigg Koh is an Associate Professor of Law and R. Gordon Butler Scholar in International Law at Boston University School of Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law and international law. His scholarship explores the cultural, racial, and foreign relations dimensions of domestic, transnational, and international criminal justice. Prior to entering the legal academy, Professor Koh served as a Trial Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and as an international lawyer at both the International Criminal Court and the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. He has also held academic positions at Boston College Law School, Columbia Law School, and Georgetown Law Center. (Visiting Fellow - September 2023 to June 2024) |
Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup, Yale UniversityJohan Gøtzsche-Astrup is a Carlsberg Internalization Fellow and a visiting research associate at Aarhus University. He studies how contention, such as protests and riots, is ascribed meaning in liberal democracies. His current work centers on the activist as a consolidated cultural character, uncovering how activists are constructed and reasoned about in the US public. In his PhD, he developed a post-foundational perspective on contention. He used this perspective to study how the boundary between political protests and riots emerged historically and is configured today. His recent work has appeared in journals such as Sociological Theory, Sociology, and Current Sociology. (Postdoctoral Fellow - October, 2022 to October, 2024) |
Marcel Knöchelmann, Yale UniversityMarcel Knöchelmann is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, with a Walter Benjamin-Scholarship of the German Research Foundation. His scholarly interests are civil sphere theory, discourse ethics, and how the two can be used to understand authorship and literary fiction in society. In Spring 2024, Marcel is also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Literature & Society Lab at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Marcel received his PhD from University College London in 2021 with a cultural sociology of authorship and publishing in the humanities. He is a trained bookseller. (Postdoctoral Fellow - March, 2023 to March, 2025). |
Tracy Adams, Yale UniversityTracy Adams, PhD, is a research affiliate at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. Her research interests include the intersection of memory, conflict, culture and politics and how meaning is constructed through interactive processes of negotiation. She has been published in high-ranking journals such as the British Journal of Sociology, American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Review of International Studies, Political Communication, Memory Studies and Media, Culture and Society. Adams is currently working on her first book manuscript titled Memory as Currency. Link to profile and full list of publications here. (Research Affiliate - September, 2023 to August, 2024) |
Chenyang Xie, Fudan University, ChinaChenyang Xie is a Ph.D. candidate from Department of Sociology at Fudan University. She received a Bachelor of Sociology from the Fudan University with her Bachelor dissertation ‘How Urban Residents’ Political Trust Constructed: Specific Trust and Diffuse Trust’. Chenyang Xie’s research interests lie in cultural sociology, social order and organizations. She currently works on identity formation and social networks of the merchant community in Yiwu through the theoretical lens of Social Drama.This certain group holds a unique significance to understanding China’s socio-economic transformation. (Visiting Graduate Student - September, 2023 to September, 2024) |
Santiago Vargas Acevedo, University of Cambridge, UKI’m a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. I hold a Bachelor of Architecture from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, and a Master’s in Culture and Society from the London School of Economics. I have worked as an architect and journalist and currently write a biweekly opinion column for the Colombian journal El Tiempo. (Visiting Graduate Student - September, 2023 to January, 2024) |
Yingyu Zang, Fudan University, ChinaYingyu Zang received his B.A. in sociology from Fudan University in 2021. He is interested in social interaction, ritual/social performance analysis, and ideology in the civil sphere. His current research focuses on the Gen Z’s reluctance in social interaction mediated by narcissism, pluralism, and individualization cultivated by social media. Taking the internet trend #socialphobia as an example, he tries to inspect the meaning-making of social ties and the ideology mechanism in contemporary everyday life. (Visiting Graduate Student - September, 2023 to January, 2024) |
Josetxo Beriain, Public University of Navarra, SpainBorn in Spain in 1959, from Navarrese parents. B. A. in Sociology and Philosophy in the Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, 1984. M. A. in Sociology at the New School University, New York, 1986, and PH. D. in Sociology at the Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, 1987. Actually, Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Pública de Navarra in Pamplona, since 1990 and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University since 2013. He has been Research Assistant at the New School University in New York and Visiting Scholar at the Universität Bielefeld (Germany), at the Freie Universität Berlin, at the Center for European Studies of the Harvard University, at the Colegio de México in México D. F., at the Universidad del País Vasco in San Sebastián, at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador, at the Universidad Iberoamericana de México D. F. y de Puebla, at the UNAM and at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, at the Berkley Center of the Georgetown University and at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University. (Visiting Faculty Fellow - September, 2023 to December, 2023) |
Maya Aguiluz Ibargüen, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoMaya Aguiluz-Ibargüen forms part of the body of researchers of the Center of Interdisciplinary Studies in Sciences and Humanities (CEIICH) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) since 1995. She is Head Researcher. She also is Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at the Graduate Program of Latin American Studies, and is part of the staff of the Graduate Program of Social and Political Science in this same University. In both programs, she has been director of Projects of Research to obtain Doctorate and Master Degrees. Recently, as a result of founding Graduate Program of Gender Studies in the UNAM, she participates tutoring graduated students. Her lines of work focus on Social Theory; Body Studies and Latin American Cultural Studies. From 2013 until now she is chair of the Seminar of Advanced Research on Body Studies at the UNAM. Currently holds the title of National Researcher of the National System of Researchers (SNI) of the National Council on Humanities, Science and Technology (CONAHCyT) of Mexico. Aguiluz-Ibargüen has carried out short stays abroad for formative motives at Georgetown University (Fall term, 2009), Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) in the New York University, and Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS) in Yale University (for a short-term during Fall semester 2013, and 2018). In addition, she has offered courses and conferences at New York University, the University of Pittsburgh, the Universidad Pública de Navarra, in Spain, the Universidade Federal du Sud de Bahia, Brazil; the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and Universidad Católica de San Pablo, both in Bolivia. She has published in 2013 Ocho religaduras sociológicas. De cuerpos y signaturas (Eight Sociological Bonds. On bodies and signatures). Printed Spanish edition. Mexico: National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico, and in 2009 El lejano próximo. Estudios sociológicos sobre extrañeidad (The Faraway Nearby. Sociological Studies on Strangerness), Barcelona: Anthropos. And with Josetxo Beriain, A Sociological View on Cultural Wars (Routledge, 2023 forthcoming) (Visiting Fellow - October, 2023 to January, 2024) |
Romulo Lelis, Yale UniversityRomulo Lelis is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning, funded by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation. Working in the intersection of intellectual history, social theory and religion, he is currently writing a book on the making of the Durkheimian sociology of religion through the collaboration of Durkheim and the Année Sociologique team. He earned a PhD in Sociology and a dual BA in Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo. (Postdoctoral Fellow - December, 2022 to December, 2023) |