Rafael Wittek

Rafael Wittek holds a PhD in Behavioral and Social Sciences (University of Groningen, 1999), and an M.A. in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology (University of Tübingen, 1991). Since 2001, he is a full professor of Theoretical Sociology at the Department of Sociology (University of Groningen), which he chaired until 2014. He held teaching appointments at Cornell University (U.S.A.), the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich (Switzerland), the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany), and the Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, Switzerland). In 2024, an inter-disciplinary inter-university consortium under his leadership received a ten year grant (30.6 M€) for a research program on Social Cohesion – Towards New Fabrics of Society (SOCION). He also is the Principal Investigator and Scientific Director of the transdisciplinary and inter-university research and training program Sustainable Cooperation – Roadmaps to Resilient Societies (SCOOP). In 2017 this initiative was awarded a ten year grant (18.8 M€) in the context of the Dutch government’s Gravitation Program. Rafael Wittek’s research interests are in the fields of cooperation science, organization studies, economic sociology and social network research. He is an elected member of the European Academy of Sociology (EAS), has (co-)authored more than 100 scientific articles, and (co-)edited four Handbooks. His latest monograph, Evolutionary Foundations of Reputation Based Cooperation, co-written with Francesca Giardini, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2023. With Emmanuel Lazega and Tom Snijders he recently co-edited the Elgar Research Agenda on Social Networks and Social Resilience (Edward Elgar, 2022). Recent papers appeared in Public Administration Review, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Applied Network Science.