Björn Wittrock
Principal of SCAS. University Professor, Uppsala University
Björn Wittrock is University Professor at Uppsala University and
Principal of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS),
Uppsala. He has formerly been Lars Hierta Professor of Government
at Stockholm University.
He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and
of Academia Europaea, and of the editorial board of its journal
European Review. He has also been guest editor of the journal of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Daedalus. He has
held visiting positions at a large number of universities and scholarly
institutions, including Berkeley, Berlin, Budapest, CASBS
(Stanford), NIAS (Wassenaar), NHC (Research Triangle Park),
and Vienna.
Björn Wittrock has worked extensively with research councils,
academies, and institutes for advanced study in a number
of countries and has recently been a member of panels of the
German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat);
the Max-Planck-Society (MPG); the European Research Council
(ERC), where he now serves on the social science panel of the
programmes for Starting and Consolidating Grants; Wissenschaftskolleg
zu Berlin (WIKO), where he has been a member of the
Academic Advisory Board but also served on many other committees;
the Volkswagen Foundation (Volkswagen Stiftung);
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ); the Leibniz Gemeinschaft;
RFEIA (the French network of Institutes for Advanced Study);
European University Institute (EUI); the Institute for Advanced
Study Princeton (IAS); the Institute for Advanced Study Budapest
(Collegium Budapest), where he has been a member of the
Academic Advisory Board and an External Faculty Member;
INTAS (the former European research council for the states of the
former Soviet Union); and SIAS (a group of nine leading institutes
for advanced study), of which he was one of the founding members.
He has also been a member of the Science Advisory Board of
the Government of Sweden. In 2005 he was elected President of
the International Institute of Sociology (founded in Paris in 1893).
He has published extensively, with eighteen books to the present
day, in the fields of intellectual history, historical social science,
social theory, and civilizational analysis. He has served on the
editorial boards of 21 scholarly journals. His publications from
recent years include: Frontiers of Sociology (Brill, 2009; with
Peter Hedström); Eurasian Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth
Centuries: Crystallizations, Divergences, Renaissances (Brill, 2004;
with Johann Arnason); Axial Civilizations and World History
(Brill, 2004; with Johann Arnason and S. N. Eisenstadt, 2005);
Public Spheres and Collective Identities (Transaction, 2001), with
S.N. Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schluchter); The Rise of the Social
Sciences and the Formation of Modernity: Conceptual Change in
Context,1750-1850 (Kluwer, 1998 and, in paperback edition, 2001;
with Johan Heilbron and Lars Magnusson). Earlier books, recently
republished, include: The European and American University
Since 1800 (Cambridge UP, 1993, and, in paperback edition, 2006,
with Sheldon Rothblatt); and Social Sciences and Modern States
(Cambridge UP, 1991, and, in paperback edition 2008), with Peter
Wagner et al.
In 1999, Björn Wittrock was awarded the Torgny Segerstedt
Medal (highest award of Uppsala University to a Swedish scholar
in the social sciences and humanities). In 2003, he received
an honorary doctorate at the University of Tartu. In 2008, he
was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz,
1. Kl) by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. In
2009, he was awarded “H.M. the King’s Medal (8th class) in the
ribbon of the Order of the Seraphim” by the King of Sweden
for “significant contributions to Swedish social science research”.
In 2010, he received the festschrift The Benefit of Broad Horizons:
Intellectual and Institutional Preconditions for a Global Social
Science (edited by Hans Joas and Barbro Klein).