Inaugural lecture Dr. Darian Meacham
Appointed professor of "practical philosophy with a thematic focus on the politics of
socio-technical systems" in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
"Instelling, werk en technologie"
What is an institution? How do they shape the ways that we behave, remember and even perceive? And what insights can we draw from institutional theory for interrogating the politics of socio-technical systems. On 7 November 2025 at 16h30, in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Practical Philosophy, Darian Meacham will set out a theory of institutions developed from within the phenomenological tradition of philosophy. Darian asks, what is it that makes the phenomenological approach to institutions valuable. He finds a response in the concept of the virtual. Taking the world of work as a special domain of human activity wherein novel technologies are developed and tested within specific institutional constraints and potentialities, Darian looks to a political ontology of institutions as a guide into the thickets of ethical and political questions that currently trouble the socio-technical systems in which we live and work.
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