Appointment: Patrik Aspers

1 February 2019. Prof. Dr. Patrik Aspers was born on 10 May 1970. He is a Swedish citizen.

He completed a technical apprenticeship and worked as a teacher, before beginning his studies in Sociology at the University of Stockholm in 1992, which he successfully completed in 1996. He earned his doctorate in 2001 with a thesis on “Markets in Fashion, A Phenomenological Approach”. After completing his doctorate, he spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the London School of Economics. From 2004 to 2008 he was a research fellow at the University of Stockholm. From 2005 to 2009 he was research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. In 2007 he returned to the University of Stockholm as Senior Lecturer and in 2008 became Guest Professor at the Centre for Fashion Studies at that same institution. In 2010 Prof. Aspers obtained a part-time position in Fashion Management at the University of Borås. In 2011 he moved to the University of Stockholm to become Professor of Sociology. Finally he was appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of Uppsala, where he also headed the Institute of Sociology from 2012 to 2016.

Sociological alternative to "homo oeconomicus"

Prof. Dr. Patrik Aspers is a general sociologist with a strong background in sociological theory and special phenomenology. His research focuses on economic sociology and the sociology of markets, especially in the field of fashion and labour markets. In his books "Orderly Fashion" (2010) and "Markets" (2011) he tries nothing less than to formulate a sociological alternative to "homo oeconomicus". His research on markets is highly topical, and his pertinent publications have made a great impact in this field of research. Prof. Aspers works almost exclusively with qualitative methods, in particular ethnographical, and in the field of visual sociology. Among other things, he wrote a textbook on ethnographical methods used by universities throughout Sweden. He is an excellent scientist and works on topics that offer a variety of points of contact for both the SHSS and the core subjects.

Teaching experience at undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels.

Prof. Aspers has extensive teaching experience at all levels of university education. He teaches at undergraduate, graduate and doctoral level and supervises dissertations. For teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, he continued his own education with targeted didactic training. He has taught in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, at a total of 15 universities. In terms of content, he teaches sociological theory and methods, but also applied courses in which students carry out their own projects. Prof. Aspers tries to design teaching as an iterative process, so that the students can experience an interchange between theory, practice and performance control.