Stefan Bargheer

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Ph.D.

Residence: December 1, 2010 - August 31, 2012

Profile

My research is unified by an interest in the question of why moral valuations of objects of nature and culture change over time and how individuals become passionate about them. In my current postdoctoral project titled Biological Diversity and Cultural Pluralism I am investigating the changing valuation of complexity in nature and culture in Germany and the United States throughout the twentieth century. I am analyzing the conjunction of the two logics of valuation until the middle of the century and their eventual disjunction in the decades thereafter, with particular emphasis on the time from the 1920s to 1980s. In addition to this, I work on several smaller projects that trace the development of the interrelationship between theoretical knowledge, research methods, and empirical data in the social sciences. I hold a PhD in Sociology and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and received my undergraduate education at the Humboldt-University in Berlin, the University of Heidelberg, and Manchester Metropolitan University. I have been an Early Career Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Göttingen. I will join the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles in Fall 2012.