Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen (KWI)

Academic Career

Since 2017: Member of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Duisburg-Essen and Affiliate Professor of Political Science.

Since 2017: Member of the Council of the Academy in Exile.

Since 2013: Senior Researcher and (since 2018) member of the executive board of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Duisburg.

Since 2012: Fellow at the KWI.

Since 2010: Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University.

2014–2017: Member of the Social Science Faculty of the University of Bochum.

1998–2012: Researcher at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany.

2006–2010: Lecturer in Political Theory at McGill University, Montreal.

1995–2010: Visiting Fellowships in the United States, Canada, India and Israel.

2001: Habilitation in Political Science at the University of Giessen, Germany.

Research Interests

Modern political theory, migration and democracy, exile studies

Recent Publications

Heins, Volker M. (2020) “Can the refugee speak? Albert Hirschman and the changing meanings of exile”. Thesis Eleven, no. 158, pp. 42-57.
Heins, Volker M., and Christine Unrau (2020) “Anti-immigrant movements and the self-poisoning of the civil sphere: The case of Germany”, in: Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trevor Stack, Farhad Khosrokhavar (eds.) Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 145-169.
Heins, Volker M. (2019) “Kultureller Pluralismus und Kritische Theorie. Von Adorno bis Honneth”, in: Ulf Bohmann, Paul Sörensen (eds.) Kritische Theorie der Politik. Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 672-693.
Heins, Volker M. (2019) “‘More Modest and More Political’: From the Frankfurt School to the Liberalism of Fear”, in: Samantha Ashenden, Andreas Hess (eds.) Between Utopia and Realism: The Political Thought of Judith N. Shklar. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 179-197.
Heins, Volker M. et al. (2018) “Gift-giving and reciprocity in global society: Introducing Marcel Mauss in international studies”, Journal of International Political Theory, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 126-144.