Executive Committee 2011-2013
Back row: Robert Fine, Frank Welz, Pertti Alasuutari, Tally Katz-Gerro, Gisèle Tchinda, Anne Ryen, Elena Danilova, Georg Vobruba, Vincenzo Cicchelli.
Front row: Roberto Cipriani, Ricca Edmondson, Maria Carmela Agodi, Pekka Sulkunen, Suvi Ronkainen, Ellen Kuhlmann, Helena Carreiras, Luis Baptista.
Missing: Ellen Annandale, Luigi Pellizzoni.
President: represents ESA and chairs the executive
Pekka Sulkunen
Vice-Presidents:
Elena Danilova
Ellen Kuhlmann
Frank Welz
Treasurer: presents budget and financial report, takes financial decisions
Tally Katz-Gerro
General Secretary: responsible for records, general overview of secretariat, relations to members
Vincenzo Cicchelli
Secretary: helps the executive, updates members list, cooperates with LOC secretariat
Gisèle Tchinda
Committees (members and attributions)
Finance Committee: membership fees, conference fees, other financial matters
Chair: Treasurer - Tally Katz-Gerro
Pekka Sulkunen
Vincenzo Cicchelli
Elena Danilova
Frank Welz
Committee for RNs: all relations and communications with RNs
Chair: Ellen Kuhlmann
Tally Katz-Gerro
Frank Welz
Luigi Pellizzoni
Robert Fine
Committee for Publications: journal (with ES editorial board), book-series, relations with publisher
Chair: Pertti Alasuutari
Elena Danilova
Ricca Edmonson
Ellen Annandale
Robert Fine
Vincenzo Cicchelli
Pekka Sulkunen
Committee for Conference Programme: relations between the executive and the Turin LOC
Chair: Frank Welz
Helena Carreiras
Luigi Pellizzoni
Pekka Sulkunen
Pertti Alasuutari
Committee for Communications and Public Relations: website, newsletter, follow-up of conference preparation steps (with the committee for Conference programme), ESA Newsletter, communication with the outside world
Chair: Elena Danilova
Pertti Alasuutari
Anne Ryen
Robert Fine
Ricca Edmondson
Committee for the Post-graduate Research: student workshop, summer school.
Chair: Luis Baptista
Ellen Kuhlmann
Suvi Ronkainen
Tally Katz-Gerro
Georg Vobruba
Ellen Annandale
Committee for External Relations: relations with national associations, ERC, ISE, ISA, other bodies
Chair: Pekka Sulkunen
Vincenzo Cicchelli
Roberto Cipriani
Maria Carmela Agodi
Anne Ryen
Ricca Edmondson
Georg Vobruba
Suvi Ronkainen
Committee for the ESA Policy: policies for membership, public relations and relations with National and International Associations.
Chair: Maria Carmela Agodi
Helena Carreiras
Anne Ryen
Committee for National Associations:
Chair: Roberto Cipriani
Georg Vobruba
Luis Baptista
Maria Carmela Agodi
Ellen Kuhlmann
The Council of National Associations has nominated in Geneva as chair of the Council and of the Nomination Committee Roberto Cipriani.
Click here to read the minutes of ESA meetings
Executive committee members:
Pekka Sulkunen
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Biography: Pekka Sulkunen is a professor of sociology at the University of Helsinki. His several books on social theory, cultural studies, addictions and preventive social policy include The Saturated Society: Regulating Risk and Lifestyle in Consumer Culture (Sage 2009). He is currently appointed as senior fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, a member of the Finnish Society of Letters and Sciences, a founding member of the ESA RN for sociology of consumption, and has served two terms in the ESA Executive Committee as chair of the External Relations Committee. His language skills include Finnish, Swedish, English, French, and German. Further information can be found at http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/staff/psulkune/.
Maria Carmela Agodi
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Biography: Maria Carmela Agodi (Italy) is a full professor of sociology, teaching courses in methodology and sociology of science, at the University Federico II in Naples. Her research, essays, and books focus on institutional change, rationality, reflexivity, welfare and the “knowledge society.” She is currently in the Executive Board of the Italian Sociological Association (AIS) and in the board of ESA RN33-Women's and Gender Studies.
Robert Fine
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Biography: Robert has an abiding interest in Marx's political thought, Enlightenment, Hegel, Critical Theory and Hannah Arendt. He has also published on labour and nationalist movements in Southern Africa and on labour and the law in UK. In recent years he has been working on cosmopolitanism, human rights, European antisemitism and natural law. At Warwick he helped set up the Social Theory Centre and chaired the Department of Sociology. In ESA he helped set up the Network on Racism and Antisemitism. He is enjoying his new status as Emeritus Professor of Sociology. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/staff/academicstaff/robertfine/home/
Anne Ryen
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Luigi Pellizzoni
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Biography: Luigi Pellizzoni is Associate Professor of Environmental Sociology and Sociology of Participatory Processes at the University of Trieste. He also teaches at the Venice University for Architecture and Planning (IUAV). His research interests intersect issues of risk, environment, sustainability, and techno-science on one side; deliberative democracy, participation, the public sphere and new governmental forms on the other.
Helena Carreiras
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Biography: Helena Carreiras holds a Phd from the European University Institute (Florence) and is currently deputy-director of the Portuguese National Defense Institute. She is assistant professor at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon and senior researcher at CIES-IUL. Her research interests are political sociology, armed forces, security and defense, gender, and research methodology.
Frank Welz
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Biography: Frank teaches sociology at Innsbruck University, Austria, and publishes on sociology of law, sociological theory and the history of the social sciences. He coordinated the ESA Network on Social Theory (2007-11) and served as vice-president of the Austrian Sociological Association. His recent publications in English include 'N. Luhmann's Sociology of Law: A Critical Appraisal' (2011) and '100 Years of Indian Sociology: From Social Anthropology to Decentring Global Sociology' (2009).
Pertti Alasuutari
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Biography: Pertti Alasuutari is an academy professor at the University of Tampere at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities. He is the editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies and has published in the areas of social theory, culture and media studies, and social research methodology. His books include Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies (Sage, 1995), An Invitation to Social Research (Sage 1998), Rethinking the Media Audience (Sage 1999), and Social Theory and Human Reality (Sage 2004). He is a board member of the ESA RN 7 on sociology of culture. He was the first president of the International Association for Cultural Studies (2002-2004).
Elena Danilova
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Biography: Elena Danilova is a Head of Department, the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow. Her research interests intersect sociology of transformations mainly in post-socialist societies; in particular she is interested in changing social identities and process of individualization. She has conducted several comparative projects during recent years, currently - in Russia and China. She also teaches sociology at the International College of Economics and Finance, the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Currently she contributes to the organisation of new ESA Research Network ”Sociology of transformations: East and West”.
Ellen Kuhlmann
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Biography: Ellen Kuhlmann is currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, and Visiting Professor of Social Policy at University Campus Suffolk, UK. Her research focuses on professional groups; health policy, organization and management of healthcare; and gender mainstreaming policies. She is the editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Healthcare (with Ellen Annandale), Palgrave, 2010, 2nd edition in 2012.
Georg Vobruba
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Biography: Georg Vobruba is professor of Sociology at the University of Leipzig, FRG. His main subjects of research are social policy, European integration and sociological theory of society.
Ricca Edmondson
E-mail address
Biography: Ricca Edmondson was educated in philosophy and social studies at the Universities of Lancaster and Oxford. She then worked for a decade in Berlin as a translator and carrying out post-doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, before moving to the School of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Ireland in Galway. Her work has centred on cultural and political aspects of sociology, with special reference to forging interdisciplinary and transnational contacts. She co-convened the ESA RN 1 on Ageing for a decade, and is particularly interested in developing the study of wisdom as a source of understanding both the role of older people in society and social innovation in general.
Ellen Annandale
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Biography: Ellen Annandale is Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester, UK. Her research intersects the sociology of health and the sociology of gender and feminist theory. Her most recent publications in this field include Women’s Health and Social Change (Routledge 2009), the 4 Volume Gender and Health (edited with Kate Hunt, Routledge 2011) and The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Health Care (edited with Ellen Kuhlmann, Palgrave 2012, 2nd edn). http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/sociology/people/eannandale/profile
Luis Baptista
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Biography: Luís Baptista is a professor of sociology at the New University of Lisbon and the vice-dean of the faculty of social sciences and humanities. His teaching and research are mainly in urban sociology and leisure activities. He has directed research projects and published on the internationalization of the Portuguese language. He is director of the CESNOVA (Center for Sociological Research). He was the vice-president and president of the Portuguese Sociological Association. He was a member of the LOC (Local Organizing Committee) of the ESA Conference in Lisbon. He is a board member of the ESA RN 27 on southern European societies.
Vincenzo Cicchelli
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Biography: Vincenzo Cicchelli (France) is Maître de Conférences at Paris Descartes and Research Fellow at Gemass (CNRS, Paris 4). His research interests include national and European identities, impact of globalization on youth, and cosmopolitan socialization. He is series editor of “Youth in a Globalising World” at Brill. He is co-president of the Groupe de Travail (Société globale, cosmopolitisme et droits humains - AISLF). His recent publications include Adolescences méditerranéennes: l’espace public à petits pas (co-ed. 2007), Deux pays, deux jeunesses? La condition juvénile en France et en Italie (co-ed. 2008), and La jeunesse n’est plus ce qu’elle était (co-ed. 2010) ; De la Mondialisation au Cosmopolitisme (co-ed. 2011)
Suvi Ronkainen
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Tally Katz-Gerro
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Biography: Tally Katz-Gerro is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Haifa. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and specializes in the sociology of consumption, culture, inequality, and environmental sociology with an emphasis on cross-national comparative perspective. She is chair of RN5 on consumption within the ESA. At the University of Haifa, she served as head of the MA program, member of the doctoral committee, and head of the university social involvement program.
Roberto Cipriani
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Biography: Roberto Cipriani is an Italian social scientist. He is professor of sociology at Roma Tre University. He has written extensively on popular religion, the sacred and secularization, and is known for his unconventional applications of the concept of "diffused religion" (religione diffusa) and then that of "religion of values" (religione dei valori). He is the author of more than fifty books and eight hundred articles and his work has been translated into English, French, Russian, Spanish, German, Chinese and Portuguese. He graduated from University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1968. From 1990 to 1994 he was president of the "Research Committee" of Sociology of Religion in the International Sociological Association. From 1995 to 1998 he was editor-in-chief of International Sociology. *From 1997 he has been a Professor of Sociology at University Roma Tre, where since 2001 he has directed the Department of Education. From 2004 to 2007 he was President of the Italian Association of Sociology. In 2008 he has been Directeur d'Etudes at Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris.
Secretariat
You can communicate with the ESA Executive Committee via our secretariat:
Gisele Tchinda, ESA, 59-61 rue Pouchet, 75017 Paris – France. Tel: +33 (0)1 40 25 12 63. Fax +33 (0)1 40 25 11 03. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Office hours: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9.30am to 17.30pm, Tuesday from 9.30am to 13.30pm (Paris time).
Editor of the Journal "European Societies": Goran Therborn, Sweden.
Editor of the book series "studies in European Societies": Pertti Alasuutari, Finland.
The Statutes provide for the European Sociological Association to be governed by an Executive Committee whose selection reflects a balance between two constituencies: individual members participating through the biannual conferences; and the national associations of Sociology whose representatives form a Council. We wish to avoid the bureaucracy of some larger international associations and have direct input from individual members at the conference, while recognising the importance of national associations in maintaining broad representative links.
Executive Committee