Prof. Dr. Armin Beverungen

Armin Beverungen is professor for the sociology of organization and economy. Previously, he has held research and teaching positions at the University of the West of England, Leuphana University and the University of Siegen. From September 2022 to August 2023, he was on leave at Leuphana and a visiting professor at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. He regularly teaches in the technologies section of the contextual studies program at the University of St. Gallen. He is an organization scholar and sociologist by training, and received his PhD for a history of critical management studies from the University of Leicester. His research interests have included the financialization of the university, corporate governance and business ethics, the politics of labour, and open access publishing. At Leuphana, he has been involved over most of the last nearly ten years in establishing the Centre for Digital Cultures. In this context, his research has increasingly engaged with media studies and science and technology studies.

Armin’s current research revolves around digital (media) technologies and organization; algorithmic management, automation and artificial intelligence; and smart, logistical cities. He is currently occupied with two projects in particular: one is a research project funded by the VolkswagenFoundation and the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Education (as part of zukunft.niedersachsen) entitled Automating the Logistical City: Space, Algorithms, Speculation. With his collaborators Ilia Antenucci and Maja-Lee Voigt, Armin here explores how Amazon’s logistical urbanism speculates on urban, automated futures. The other one is a consortial research project funded by the VolkswagenFoundation on “Smartness as Wealth”, where Armin explores with Orit Halpern (TU Dresden), Marc Steinberg (Concordia University, Montreal), Liza Cirolia (African Center for Cities, Kapstadt) and Anindita Nag (Jindal Global, Delhi) the promises of wealth associated with smart technologies in cities.

Armin is also involved in a variety of – mostly open access – publishing projects. For ten years, he was a member of the editorial collective of the journal ephemera: theory & politics in organization, and remains an affiliate. He was a founding editor of the journal spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures and the book series Digital Cultures. He is also an associate editor of the journal Organization: the critical journal of organization, theory and society. He reviews regularly for a variety of journals in sociology, organization studies, cultural studies, media studies and science and technology studies.

At Leuphana, Armin is a member of the study commission for the MA programs in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and is a deputy director of the MA program in Cultural Studies: Culture and Organization. He teaches regularly there and in the bachelor major in cultural studies and digital media. He also regularly supervises BA and MA theses in these programs, and is available for PhD supervision in his field of research.