Robert van Krieken


Robert van Krieken is an Australian sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of Sydney. He previously worked as Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin. He is the author of Children and the State, Norbert Elias, Celebrity Society, and co-author of the sociology textbook Sociology, and Celebrity and the Law. He has served in a variety of offices in the International Sociological Association and is currently a board member of Working Group 02: Historical and Comparative Sociology. In 2006-2010, he was a member of the executive committee, and at the XVII World Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg, he was elected vice-president for 2010-2014. He is also a member of The Australian Sociological Association.
His fields of research include the sociology of childhood, processes of civilization and decivilization, the formation of the self, sociological theory, celebrity, law and society, and cultural genocide.

Biography

Robert Michael van Krieken was born to Dutch parents in Hong Kong, where he attended primary school. Since secondary school, he has lived in Sydney, Australia. He studied sociology as part of a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of [New South Wales], where he also completed his PhD in 1977. He started working at the University of Sydney in 1979, teaching Social Theory in the Department of Social Work. In the 1990s, he played a central role in the development of a sociology programme at the University of Sydney, which since 2001 has been the core of the Department of Sociology & Social Policy. He also completed a law degree at the University of Sydney, gaining his LLB in 2003, which formed the foundation for the development of a programme in socio-legal studies, now also part of the Department of Sociology & Social Policy.
He is currently on the editorial board of Contemporary Sociology, and he has also served on the editorial boards of Law & Social Inquiry and Childhood.

Publications

Books

  • Celebrity Society
  • Celebrity and the Law
  • Sociology
  • Norbert Elias].
  • Children and the State: Social Control and the Formation of Australian Child Welfare

    Selected articles

  • , Law & Social Inquiry 26 2011: 125-49.
  • ‘Cultural Genocide’, in , edited by Dan Stone, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008: 128-155.
  • ‘The ethics of corporate legal personality’, in , edited by Stewart Clegg & Carl Rhodes, London: Routledge, 2006: 77-96.
  • , Social & Legal Studies 15 2006: 577-93.
  • ‘’, Modern Law Review 68 2005: 25-48.
  • ‘’, Journal of Sociology 38 2002: 255-73
  • ‘’, UNSW Law Journal 23 2000: 63-77.
  • , British J of Sociology 50 1999: 295-313.
  • Sociology 31 1997: 445-71.
  • Archives Europeénes de Sociologie 31 1990: 353-71.
  • ‘”’ Sociological Review 37 1989: 193-218.
  • ‘’ Theory & Society 15 1986: 401-29.