Professor Ulrich Beck
Ulrich Beck 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. Professor Beck is co-editor of Soziale Welt and editor of the Edition Second Modernity at Suhrkamp (Berlin). He was founding director of the research centre at the University of Munich (in cooperation with three other universities in the area), Sonderforschungsbereich – Reflexive Modernization, financed 1999-2009 by the DFG (German Research Society). 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 institutionalized individualization, inequality, world at risk, cosmopolitanism, cosmoplitization and the emergence of cosmopolitan risk communities.