The Colloquium series of the summer term 2026 by the Research Training Group GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures” will feature an on-site lecture by Prof. Dr. Jens BECKERT. You are cordially invited to attend.

Prof. Dr. Jens BECKERT (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies)
“Imagined Futures and Capitalist Dynamics”
Monday, May 4, 2026, 4–6 pm (Central European Summer Time)
Venue: University of Duisburg-Essen, Building SG 183, Geibelstr. 41, 47057 Duisburg, Germany

Bio
Prof. Dr. Jens BECKERT is director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) since 2005. He attained both his PhD (1996) and his Habilitation (2003) in sociology from the Freie Universität Berlin and specialises in the role of the economy in society, especially based on studies of markets organizational sociology, wealth inequality and inheritance, and sociological theory, with a current focus imagined futures, sociology of markets, and climate change. He is editor and member of the editorial board for a number of scientific journals, among them the Socio-Economic Review. His recent publications include the monographies Verkaufte Zukunft: Warum der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu scheitern droht (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2024) and Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016) as well as the journal article “Capital and the Family” (with Isabell Stamm, in: British Journal of Sociology, 2025).

Organizer
Research Training Group 2833 “East Asian Futures: Visions and Realizations on National, Transregional and Global Scales”, Ruhr University Bochum and University of Duisburg-Essen.