Prof. Dr. habil. Dietmar J. Wetzel

After studying sociology, anthropology and modern German literary history at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg im Breisgau, in 2001 Professor Wetzel completed his dissertation »Discourses of Politics - Between Reconstruction and Deconstruction« (Wilhelm-Fink, 2003). At the same time, he graduated from the University of Freiburg with a diploma course at the French Center (1997-1999). Following posts at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt am Main (2001-2005) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (2005-2007), where Dietmar Wetzel habilitated in 2012 with a thesis on the »Sociology of Competition«. He worked in research and teaching at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Bern (2007-2013). After completing a fellowship at the post-graduate school at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. Prof. Wetzel was coordinator and research assistant at the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen in the field of security ethics (2014-2016). In parallel, he was co-director of the interdisciplinary SINERGIA project on new community forms and authenticity (2014-2017). Afterwards Prof. Wetzel worked as lecturer, research associate and co-director of the SNSF-project "Transformative Communities as Innovative Life Forms?" at the University of Basel (2016-2019). During this time, he also acted as a deputy professor with a focus on »living and sustainability«, at the University of Hamburg in the Department of Social Economics (2017-2018). For the winter semester 2019/2020, he was appointed to the professorship of Social Sciences at the Medical School.

Teaching Activities

Since the late 1990s, Prof. Dr. Dietmar J. Wetzel has gained teaching experience at various universities, colleges and health schools, for example at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, at the universities in Bern and Basel as well as at the University of Applied Sciences in Bern and the University of Health in Fribourg. His teaching focuses on the introduction to the basic concepts and theories of sociology. In addition, he has repeatedly offered courses on the following topics: political philosophy and social theory, market and economic sociology, love and emotion sociology, sociology of life and philosophy of science. Prof. Wetzel teaches at the Medical School in the field of social sciences, especially in the fields of macro-sociology, political theory and international relations.

Research Interests

The main research areas of Prof. Dr. med. Dietmar J. Wetzel have been at the interface between sociology, philosophy, economics and psychology for many years. He has repeatedly researched subjects of general sociology and cultural and economic sociology (including competition, (financial) markets, community, equity and sustainability). In the empirical-interdisciplinary projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Mr. Wetzel has linked theoretical-conceptual questions about community, alternative organizations and social practices with empirical questions. He is currently researching the areas of »transformation, innovation and sustainable forms of life« as well as »linking theoretical and empirical resonance and recognition analytics in organizations«.

Publications

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