Peter Wagner is a German social and political theorist. His research brings together social and political philosophy and theory with the comparative-historical sociology of modern societies in Europe, Latin America and southern Africa. He has done comparative research in the history of the social sciences and has contributed to debates about the so-called Axial Age, while his recent work has addressed questions of historical progress and social and political transformations. He is a former Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute, Florence,[1] and a former Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.[2] At present he is an ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona.[3]
He has also held visiting positions at the Université de Paris 8 (2011); the Université catholique de Louvain-la-neuve (2009–10); University of Cape Town (2009–10); the University of Bergen (2001); the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1998; 2001); the University of California at Berkeley (1996; 1997); the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1990–91); and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris (1994), among others.[4] He was Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded Advanced Grant project “Trajectories of modernity: comparing non-European and European varieties”,[5] and the Project Leader of the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) Joint Research Programme “Uses of the Past” on the project “The debt: historicizing Europe's relations with the 'South'”, with Axel Honneth, Simona Forti and Bo Stråth as Principal Investigators.[6][7]
