Prof Gerard Delanty

Post:	Professor (Centre for Social and Political Thought)
Other posts:	Emeritus Professor (Sociology and Criminology)
	Professor of Sociology & Social & Political Thought (Sussex European Institute)
	Professor of Sociology and Social Political Thought (School of Law, Politics and Sociology)
Location:	FREEMAN CENTRE
Email:	G.Delanty@sussex.ac.uk
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What is this?

Biography

I am an interdisciplinary sociologist with an interest in social theory and the cultural and historical analysis of social and political questions. I am especially interested in the comparative analysis of modernity in global perspective and in social change in Europe. Most of my work concerns in one way or another the implications of globalization for the analysis of the social world. I have written eleven books, many of which have been translated into several languages, and edited seven. I have published over 100 papers on various issues in social and political theory, European identities, globalization, nationalism and the cultural and historical sociology of modernity. I came to Sussex University in September 2007, having been previously a Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, where I was since 1996. Since 2021 I am Emeritus Professor of Sociology. I have lectured extensively throughout the world and held visiting professorships at the East Normal University Shanghai in 2022, Alberto Hurado University Santiago in 2021, Federal University of Brasilia in 2017, Barcelona University in Spring 2013, Deakin University, Melbourne in 2006, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, in 2000, and York University, Toronto in 1998. I studied sociology and philosophy at University College Cork, Ireland graduating with the B.A. in 1982, M.A. in 1984 and PhD in 1987. I was a DAAD Fellow at Frankfurt University in 1985/6.

Role

• Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social & Political Thought

Community and Business

Impact Statement: A major aspect of my research concerns the European heritage, which I have been working on for over twenty years. I have a number of publications on aspects of this broad topic that have led to activities on public understandings of cultural heritage and in particular of the European heritage.

One recent project is a Horizon2020 ‘platform’ project in which I was a Co-PI. This project was designed to bring together academic researchers and stakeholders with a view to identifying new research areas and to guide policy making in the area of cultural heritage and with a specific focus on commemoration, memory and history, national identities and other kinds of collective identity.

I have contributed to the first temporary exhibition of The House of European History, a museum of European history that was opened in May 2017 in Brussels. The exhibition is entitled 'Encounters and Exchange: Moving beyond Borders'. I wrote a chapter for the catalogue,  ‘What happens when one culture meets another? Cultural encounters and European civilisation’ Interactions. Centuries of Commerce, Combat and Creation, Temporary Exhibition Catalogue, Brussels: House of European History/European Parliament, 2017. I have also more recently contributed to the work of the Council of Europe in relation to the Faro Convention on cultural heritiage. See here for a key note speech I have at a Council of Europe convention in Lisbon in may 2018. 

https://rm.coe.int/council-of-europe-framework-convention-on-the-value-of-cultural-herita/16808afd09

I have contributed to a publication of the British Academy  ‘Legacies, History, and Ideas of Europe’ in European Union and Disunion: What has Held Europeans together and What is Dividing Them? London: British Academy, 2017.

My research has contributed to setting the European research and policy making agenda on European cultural heritage in a more critical direction through involving a broad range of stakeholders in giving greater prominence to the transnational aspects of European heritages.