Patrick Baert

Who is Patrick Baert?

Patrick Baert is a Belgian sociologist and social theorist, based in Britain. He is Professor of Social Theory at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

Baert studied at the Free University of Brussels and at Oxford University where he obtained his D.Phil. in 1990. In Oxford he studied with Rom Harré and wrote his dissertation on George Herbert Mead's notion of time and its relevance for social theory, subsequently published as Time, Self and Social Being. He carried out postdoctoral work with Claude Javeau in Brussels and Anthony Giddens in Cambridge before taking up a teaching position at Cambridge. He has held various visiting positions, including Brown University, the University of Cape Town, the CNRS/EHESS and the University of British Columbia. He also published Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. and Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Towards Pragmatism. Since January 2013, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society.

Baert argues against several existing contributions to the philosophy of social sciences.