Steven Vertovec | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 2 July 1957 |
| Citizenship | US and British |
| Alma mater | University of Colorado, University of California, Santa Barbara, Oxford University |
| Known for | Superdiversity, Backlash against Multiculturalism, The Urban Context: Ethnicity, Social Networks, and Situational Analysis |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Anthropology, Diversity Studies, Transnationalism, Diaspora Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies |
| Institutions | Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity |
| Website | http://www.mmg.mpg.de/departments/socio-cultural-diversity/scientific-staff/prof-dr-steven-vertovec/ |
Steven Vertovec (born 2 July 1957) is an anthropologist and Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, based in Göttingen, Germany.[1] He is also currently Honorary Joint Professor of Sociology and Ethnology at the Georg August University of Göttingen and Supernumerary Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford.
Born in Chicago, Vertovec completed a double major (anthropology and religious studies) B.A. Magna cum laude at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1979. Thereafter, he gained an M.A. in Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1982. In 1988 he was awarded a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, where he was a student at Nuffield College.
Vertovec’s doctoral work concerned religion, ethnicity and socio-economic development in Trinidad, West Indies.[2] Since then, his work has examined issues surrounding ethnic and religious minorities, international migration, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, diasporas, transnationalism, diversity and super-diversity. He has mainly conducted research in Britain and Germany.
He has been awarded a scholarship from Nuffield College, Oxford and fellowships from the University of California, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,[3] British Economic and Social Research Council and the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study), Berlin.[4] Recent grants include an Advanced Investigator Award from the European Research Council[5]
Vertovec has held numerous positions, including: Postdoctoral Fellow (under an award from the Leverhulme Trust) in the School of Geography at the University of Oxford; Principal Research Fellow at the ESRC Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick; Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford; and Senior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford.
He has managed several large-scale research initiatives, including: Director of ‘Multicultural Policies and Modes of Citizenship in European Cities’ within UNESCO’s MOST programme; Director of the ESRC national research programme on ‘Transnational Communities’; and Founding Director of the ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS).[6] Vertovec has acted as expert or consultant for numerous agencies, including the Expert Council of German Foundations on Migration and Integration,[7] the UK government’s Cabinet Office, National Audit Office, Home Office, Department for International Development, Department of Communities and Local Government, the British Council, the European Commission, the G8, World Bank and UNESCO.
After coining the term super-diversity[8] different major news outlets have reported on Vertovec's research [9][10] and Vertovec himself has actively contributed to debates on immigration and thinking about social complexities[11]
