Hans Joas moves to FRIAS

On 1st April 2011, Prof. Dr Hans Joas took up a post as Permanent Fellow of the School of History at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) based at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. Hans Joas is the Max Weber Professor at the Universität Erfurt and a professor at the University of Chicago.

Hans Joas is one of the most distinguished German social scientists. His work centres on the social dimension of values, with a particular focus on explaining their genesis and evolution. He has written significant papers on the sociology of religion and on the relationship between the genesis of values and the history of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. The broad spectrum of his research is documented in seminal works such as “The Creativity of Action” (1992), “The Genesis of Values” (1997), “Social theory” (2004), “Do We Need Religion?” (2004) and “Kriegsverdrängung. Ein Problem in der Geschichte der Sozialtheorie” (2008), with “Begriffene Geschichte. Beiträge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks” published only very recently. His book on the history of human rights will also be published in the autumn.