Prof. Dr. Marian Burchardt (Universität Leipzig)

Marian Burchardt is a cultural sociologist interested in how diversity shapes institutions and everyday life, and was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute. His research engages with the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, urban sociology and theories of modernity, and draws on qualitative and ethnographic methods. He is especially interested in how notions of diversity influence social life and public space through nation-state regulation, law and urban policy. In 2015, he received the Heinz Maier Leibnitz Award from the German Science Foundation (DFG), the most prestigious German award for junior researchers.

Before coming to the Max Planck Institute, he was a researcher in the project “Multiple Secularities”, based at the Cultural Studies Department at the University of Leipzig, and a lecturer at the Department of Development Sociology at the University of Bayreuth. He was also a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York City, the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB), the Centre for German and European Studies at the Université de Montreal and the University of Stellenbosch. He wa editor-in-chief of the journal New Diversities.

His doctoral dissertation on the entanglements of religion, sexuality and biomedicine in South Africa’s HIV/AIDS epidemic has been published by Palgrave (Non-Governmental Public Action Series). Next to his academic practice, he also worked for more than two and a half years as a consultant and project manager in international development and humanitarian assistance. This has taught him a lot about the world of NGOs and how globalization works on the ground.

Marian Burchardt is now at the University of Leipzig. ✉ marian.burchardt(at)uni-leipzig.de