SCAS News - 17 March, 2014

Former SCAS Long-term Fellow Peter Hedström has been Granted
Funding by the Swedish Research Council

Former SCAS Non-resident Long-term Fellow Peter Hedström is one of nine researchers who
have been granted funding from the prestigious “Grants for Distinguished Professors Programme (rådsprofessorsprogrammet) by the Swedish Research Council. Peter Hedström is the only one
to be granted this position in the field of the humanities and social sciences.

The objective of the programme is to create excellent conditions for the most distinguished scholars
to conduct long-term, innovative research of great potential, allowing also for considerable risk-taking
in the efforts to achieve scientific breakthroughs.The programme is open to all subject areas, and the
total number of applications submitted for the programme in the 2013 call amounted to 301.

Hedström’s project focuses on the development of the analytical sociology and has been granted a
total of 50,000 000 SEK over a ten-year-period, starting in 2014.

Peter Hedström has a long and close affiliation with SCAS. Thus he was a Fellow of the Collegium
already in the autumn of 1994. He then also spent the academic year of 2001/02 and the autumn of
2002 as a Fellow in residence. During this time he wrote most of his book Dissecting the Social:
On the Principles of Analytical Sociology (Cambridge University Press, 2005). This book subsequently
received the James S. Coleman Book Award from the American Sociological Association in 2006.

During 2004 and 2005 Peter Hedström and Björn Wittrock jointly prepared and organized the 37th
World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology (IIS; founded in Paris in 1893). The
Congress took place in Stockholm in June 2005. It was attended by some 1300 participants. During
the years 2005-2013 Peter Hedström and Björn Wittrock served as Secretary General and President
respectively of the IIS. In 2009 they jointly co-edited the volume Frontiers of Sociology (Leiden: Brill).

In the years 2005 – 2013 SCAS greatly benefitted from having Peter Hedström as one of its Non-
resident Long-term Fellow with a focus on Programmes in Analytical and Experimental Social and
Behavioural Theory.