Larissa Buchholz is an award-winning sociologist who works at the intersection of the sociology of art and culture, global and transnational sociology, and sociological theory. She also has interests in the sociology of markets and the sociology of intellectuals/ knowledge. Holding four graduate degrees (three Master’s and a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University), Buchholz is currently an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University, a faculty fellow at the Critical Realism Network Yale University, and an editorial board member of Sociological Theory. Prior to that, she was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, breaking barriers as the first woman elected from her discipline.
Dr. Buchholz’s recently published book, The Global Rules of Art (Princeton University Press, 2022), examines the historical emergence of a global cultural field and how artists from formerly colonized or “peripheral” countries reach worldwide recognition after centuries of exclusion and discrimination. She has additionally published over 20 academic pieces (including peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries), which have been cited by scholars on six continents across subfields in the social sciences and humanities. Her publications have engaged with a variety of topics in her areas of interest, as, for example, culture and networks (with Harrison C. White, Jan Fuhse, and Matthias Thiemann), the uses of ethnography for studying embodiment, the sociology of intellectual interventions (with Gil Eyal), a comparison of the reception of French social theory in the UK and the US, globalization in contemporary art, global cultural circulation and valuation, global fields theory, a Bourdieusian approach to the “center-periphery” model, the impact of Covid-19 on the art market (with Gary Alan Fine and Hannah Wohl), art and sustainability, the utility of causal mechanisms as well as real types for global theorizing or Human Rights and the transformation of nation-state institutions in world society, among other topics. Dr. Buchholz also was a contributor to Harrison C. White’s 2nd Identity & Control.
Buchholz gave keynotes at Cambridge University, UK (2016), the University of Pennsylvania, USA (2018), the Max Planck Institute Cologne, Germany (2018), and at Uppsala University, Sweden (2022). Her work has garnered multiple awards, including a Fulbright Award, the Alex Inkeles Prize and Robert K. Merton Award at Columbia University, the outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association, a William F. Milton Fund Award at Harvard University, the Junior Theorist Prize of the International Sociological Association, the Junior Theorist Award of the American Sociological Association, as well as the outstanding recent Alumni Award of Columbia University. In addition to a Fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows, she was awarded a Junior Thyssen Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University. In addition to her academic work, Buchholz has engaged in consulting for art organizations across several countries.