Kobe De Keere is assistant professor in cultural sociology. He holds Master’s degrees in philosophy (Ghent University) and sociology (Free University of Brussels) and received a Ph.D. in sociology from the Free University of Brussels. He published on topics such as social control, cultural class boundaries and moral conflicts. Currently, his main research focus is on subjects such as value of work, gatekeeping mechanisms and evaluation practices within the labor market.
He is a member of the program group Cultural Sociology of the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and a fellow of the Norbert Elias Foundation. He has been a part of the TOR-research group of the Free University of Brussels and was visiting scholar at the Affective Science Group of the Social Psychology Department at the University of Oslo. He is currently (2021) holding the GAK Fellowship at The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (KNAW) and is affiliated scholar of the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion (Harvard University)
collaborators
Diliaria Valeeva is a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven and a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. Her research are on business elites, financialization of corporations, and social networks. Diliara’s research has been published in Social Networks, PlosOne, Applied Economics. More information on https://www.diliaravaleeva.com/
Svetlana Kharchenkova is assistant professor at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University. She works at the intersection of cultural and economic sociology and contemporary China. Svetlana’s research is on creative industries and cultural markets in China, such as contemporary art market and book publishing industry, with particular focus on institutionalization, valuation, and globalization. She obtained her PhD in sociology from the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam. Her work has been published in, among others, Socio-Economic Review, Poetics, and The China Quarterly.
Fabio Cescon (MSc) is a Junior Lecturer at the Sociology department at the University of Amsterdam. He has obtained undergraduate degrees in Sociology and Philosophy from Université Saint-Louis – Brussels and a master’s in Social Science Research from the UvA. His specialization lies at the intersection of the sociology of valuation and urban aesthetics. His most recent works focus on the process of urban decommunization in post-Soviet Ukraine, notably the re-territorialization of Soviet statues in the city of Kharkiv.
Laura Vonk is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and a lecturer at the Faculty of Business & Economics at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She is interested in issues related to work and inequalities. Her dissertation research focuses on the role of aesthetics in work and in finding work. More specifically, her current research projects investigate the moral discomfort of the importance of aesthetics by looking into aesthetic advice from temp agencies and by investigating recruiters’ ambiguity regarding the role of aesthetics in application procedures.
Abigail Harrington is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Birmingham. Previously did a research master’s in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Specialising in research on the digitalisation of work, the platformization of cultural industries, aesthetic labour, exploitation, resistance and collective action.
Luisa Burchartz (University of Amsterdam)
(e)valuating work(ers) 