Professor Derek Sayer FRHistS, FRSC

PhD Supervision Interests

Professor Sayer is interested in supervising PhDs in twentieth-century art, architecture, and photography; historical memory and social identity; social, cultural, and aesthetic theories of modernity; surrealism; and modern Czech history.

Current Teaching

HIST351, How the Camera Changed the World

HIST414, Advanced Cultural History (Art and Politics between the World Wars)

HIST 526, Historical Methods for the Arts and Social Sciences

Research Interests

I have recently published a large book with Princeton University Press entitled Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History. The research for this project was supported by the Canada Research Chairs program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

My wider research interests include social and cultural theory, especially classical social theory (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel) and French poststructuralism; the history and sociology of "modernity"; visual culture, especially modern art, architecture, and photography; surrealist thought; and issues of historical "memory".

Additional Information

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (1990)

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1994)

Professor Emeritus (Canada Research Chair), University of Alberta

Research Grants

2009-11. Royal Society/British Academy.   Newton International Fellowship (Dariusz Gafijczuk).  £99,000 for project The Ruins of Mitteleuropa.   UK academic sponsor.

2008-9. Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).   Research Leave (two terms).  £33,000 to work on Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century.

2001-5. Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).  $125,000 to establish Visual Culture Research Laboratory at University of Alberta.

2000-3. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Interdisciplinary Studies Committee.  $24,000 for project The Arts of Modernity.  

1996-9.  SSHRC, History Committee.  $35,000 for project Prague and Modernity.

1991-94. SSHRC, Sociology Committee.  $47,000 for project Prague 1848-1990.

1986-8. British Academy.  £10,000 for project Bastardy in English History. 

Career Details

2000-5.  Canada Research Chair in Social Theory and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta

1988-2000.  Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta 

1986-8.  Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta

1979-86.  Lecturer in Sociology, University of Glasgow

1978-9.  Lecturer in Sociology, Glasgow College of Technology

1975-8.  SSRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Durham.

Visiting positions: University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (1981-3); Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (1986); Czech Academy of Sciences (1991-3)

External Roles

Managing editor (with Dr Yoke-Sum Wong), Journal of Historical Sociology, Wiley-Blackwell, quarterly since 1988 (http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0952-1909)

Web Links

Camera Historica (public portal for HIST 351 How the Camera Changed the World) 

CoastsofBohemia (personal blog) 

• Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century (Belfast Telegraph)

  04/05/2013
  “Can a city define a century?  Sayer seems to think so and he foregoes a conventional retelling to concentrate on themes, mixing literary and political, the harshly realistic and the absurd.  This ... Read more»

• Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century (review)

  15/03/2013
  PRINCETON, NJ.- Setting out to recover the dreamworlds of modernity in the boulevards, interiors, and arcades of the “city of light,â€� Walter Benjamin dubbed Paris “the capital of the nineteenth ... Read more»

• Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century (review)

  28/01/2013
  Cultural historian Sayer (The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History) delivers a dense but captivating portrait of 20th-century Prague, a city that entered the 20th century as part of the Austrian-Hungari ... Read more»

• Royal Society of Canada

  (Recipient)
  Activity: Election to learned society
  Read more»

• Global art history and the Peripheries Challenge.

  (Invited speaker) 12/6/2013 → 14/6/2013
  Activity: Participation in conference
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• Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century? A conversation between Michael Beckerman (NYU/Lancaster University), JindÅ™ich Toman (University of Michigan-Ann Arbor), Derek Sayer (Lancaster University) and Peter Zusi (SSEES).

  (Contributor) 10/6/2013
  Activity: Public lecture/debate/seminar
  Read more»

• International Summer School in Cultural Sociology: Memory, Culture & Identity

  (Contributor) 19/6/2013 → 29/6/2013
  Activity: Research and Teaching at External Organisation
  Read more»