Steven Vertovec is Managing Director of the Max-Planck Institute for Political and Social Science (formerly the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity), Göttingen, Honorary Joint Professor of Sociology and Ethnology, University of Göttingen, and Emeritus Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford. Previously he was Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Founding Director of the British Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), and Senior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford.
Currently he is Editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series ‘Global Diversities’ and curator of the Substack platform ‘Futures of Difference’. Prof. Vertovec has held fellowships at the University of California, University of Warwick, Free University Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin, University of British Columbia and Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study), Berlin. In 2018, Vertovec was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Social Sciences) at the Université de Liège.
His research interests surround globalization and transnational social formations, international migration, ethnic diasporas and contexts of urban diversity. He is author of Hindu Trinidad (Macmillan, 1992), The Hindu Diaspora (Routledge, 2000), Transnationalism (Routledge, 2009) and Super-diversity: Migration and Social Complexity (Routledge, 2022) and editor or co-editor of thirty-five volumes including Islam in Europe (Macmillan, 1997), Migration, Diasporas and Transnationalism (Edward Elgar, 1999), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press, 2003), The Multicultural Backlash (Routledge 2010), Migration (five volumes, Routledge 2010), Migration and Diversity (Elgar, 2014), the International Handbook of Diversity Studies (Routledge, 2015), Diversities Old and New (Palgrave, 2015) and The Oxford Handbook of Superdiversity (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Prof. Vertovec has acted as expert or consultant for numerous agencies, including the German Expert Council on Migration and Integration, 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.
Current Position(s):
- Managing Director, Max-Planck Institute for Political and Social Science, Göttingen, Germany
- Honorary Joint Professor of Sociology and Ethnology, University of Göttingen, Germany
- Emeritus Fellow, Linacre College, Oxford
For more about his research at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and his publications, please visit his profile here.