Manuela Boatcă

Manuela Boatcă is Professor of Sociology and Head of School of the Global Studies Programme at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She previously served as Rector's Fellow at the University of Freiburg (October 2021-March 2022), Professor of Sociology of Global Inequalities at the Latin American Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin (2012-2015), and Visiting Professor at IUPERJ, Rio de Janeiro (2007/08).

Boatcă earned her degree in English and German languages and literatures before pursuing a PhD in sociology. Her academic journey from Romania to Germany in the late 1990s significantly shaped her critical perspective on European identity, colonial legacies, and global inequalities.

Her research spans historical-comparative sociology, world-systems analysis, and theories of inequality with a strong focus on postcolonial perspectives. She examines global inequalities through the lenses of gender, citizenship, and modernity/coloniality, with particular attention to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Her work critically engages with concepts of multiple and peripheral modernities, discrimination/ethnicization/racialization in historical and international comparison, and mental maps of global power structures.

Boatcă's publications reveal a consistent focus on decolonizing sociological knowledge production and challenging Eurocentric frameworks. Her research demonstrates how transnational inequality patterns have historical roots extending far beyond contemporary globalization, with colonial and imperial legacies continuing to shape contemporary social structures. She has developed innovative methodological approaches such as 'counter-mapping' and 'creolization as method' to analyze global social phenomena.

• ACLS collaborative fellowship with Anca Parvulescu for research on inter-imperiality in Transylvania
• Barrington Moore Preis der Sektion Vergleichende und Historische Soziologie
• Honorable Mention of the Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award
• René-Wellek-Preis für die beste Monographie
• Selected as one of the most noteworthy academic papers of 2021 by The Sociological Review
• Selected as one of the 20 key articles published in Current Sociology's 70-year anniversary

Boatcă leads the 'Decoloniality Now' initiative at the University of Freiburg and collaborates on 'Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict' with the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute. Her influential podcast appearance on 'Europeans' with The Sociological Review demonstrates her commitment to public sociology and engaging broader audiences with critical perspectives on European identity and colonial legacies.