Dr. Isabelle Ferreras

Isabelle Ferreras is a guest professor at the University of Bremen, Germany. She will be holding the Chair for International Comparative Studies during this Summer Semester 2007. Doctor Ferreras is a sociologist (PhD, Louvain) and a political scientist (MSc, M.I.T.). Her research focuses on the multiple dimensions of work in the context of the service-based economy. From a normative perspective, she is interested in clarifying the potential contradictions between capitalism and democracy. She has a book just out at Les Presses de Sciences Po, Paris.

Based on what Ferreras constructs as critical case in the context of the service-based economy – the case of supermarket check-out clerks, the book sketches a new theory of work. Her sociological and historical account shows that as a social experience, work is of an expressive, public, and “political” nature. Moreover, it shows that the normative content of this political nature relates to the democratic intuition. Ferreras is a research fellow of the Belgian National Science Foundation, an associate professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, and a senior research associate of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard University where she coordinates the WorklifeWizard research project. While in Bremen, she is staying in Delmenhorst as a Fellow of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg. She is teaching the course ‘Labor Relations in Europe’ (LV 11-193) in the Masters Program in European Labor Relations, as well as a Research Perspectives Seminar for PhD students in the B Stream of the GSSS.

Phone: +32 (0)10 47 42 37

Email: iferreras@law.harvard.edu

Printable Version

Contact: iferreras@law.harvard.edu