Dr Austin Harrington

Profile

My areas of research and teaching include classical and contemporary social theory; sociology of the arts and literature; sociology of religion; historical sociology of European ideas and intellectuals; philosophy of the social sciences; political sociology; global and decolonial studies; and the sociology of emotion, affect and intimate life.

Although much of my research is theoretical in nature, I teach many core topics in substantive empirical sociology. I am available as a doctoral adviser in almost any area of the discipline, whether in a lead role or a more supporting position, depending on subject.

I have taught previously at universities in Britain, the United States and Germany, and have held post-doctoral positions in Vienna, Florence, Berlin and Los Angeles as well as pre-doctoral scholarships in Tübingen and Paris. In Germany in 2009, I was awarded a Habilitation in sociology from the Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien, at the University of Erfurt.

European Journal of Social Theory

Thesis Eleven

Max Weber Studies

Research interests

My two major publications in recent years are German Cosmopolitan Social Thought and the Idea of the West: Voices from Weimar (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Georg Simmel: Essays on Art and Aesthetics (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

I am currently completing an expansive monograph on the theme of ‘Disappointed Societies: Understanding Societal Disillusionment in Late Modernity’.

The project draws together sources in classical and contemporary social thought to address the central crisis tendencies in Western societies of the past fifty years, understood as a condition of at once affective and systemic disintegration, dysregulation or ‘dis-appointment’.

Student education

I teach introductory sociology, classical and contemporary social theory, sociology of the arts, sociology of religion, political sociology, and general cultural sociology.