Prof. Dr. Timon Beyes
Centre for Digital Cultures
Associated member, Leuphana Center for Organization & Social Transformation
Associated member, Centre for Critical Studies
Vita
Timon Beyes is Professor of Sociology of Organization and Culture at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is a founding director of Leuphana University's Centre for Digital Cultures, director of the Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organization (ISCO), speaker of the Doctoral Program in Sociology and Cultural Organization and program director of the MA program in Culture and Organization. He is also affiliated with the Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, and acts as a Senior Editor for the journal Organization Studies.
Timon has a background in Sociology and Management Studies and has done his doctoral and post-doctoral research at the Institute of Sociology and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. From 2012-2017, he was full professor at Copenhagen Business School's Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy. He has held visiting professorships at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Université Paris Dauphine.
In his research, he seeks to reconsider organization as a primary concern of cultural theory, and cultural theory as a primary concern for the study of organization. Research areas include the fields of media culture, art and aesthetics, cities and publics as well as higher education.
Projects
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«Curtius Academy» im Rahmen des European Haniel Program on Entrepreneurship and the Humanities (2023-2026)
Timon Beyes (Project manager, academic) , (Partner) , (Partner)
→Project: Research
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TrICo Subprojekt - Community Art and Culture
Timon Beyes (Project manager, academic) , Boukje Cnossen (Project manager, academic) , Robin Kuchar (Project staff) , Lana Bartusch (Project manager, academic) , (Project staff) , (Project staff)
→Project: Transfer (R&D project)
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Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy 2022-2024 (Fritz Thyssen Stiftung)
Timon Beyes (Project manager, academic) , Claus Pias (Project manager, academic)
→Project: Scientific event
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Erasmus Mundus Design Measure: Thinking in Action: Creative Transformation of Intercultural Common Space
Volker Kirchberg (Project manager, academic) , Timon Beyes (Project manager, academic) , Boukje Cnossen (Project manager, academic)
→Project: Other
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DFG Reserach Training Group 2114: Cultures of Critique - Forms, Media, Effects
Beate Söntgen (Project manager, academic) , Erich Hörl (Project manager, academic) , Timon Beyes (Project manager, academic) , Roberto Nigro (Project manager, academic)
→Project: Research
Publications
Books and anthologies
- Organizing Colour: Toward a Chromatics of the Social
Timon Beyes (Author) , 2024 Stanford, CA , 292 p.Research output: Books and anthologies › Monographs › Research › peer-review
- Proof of Stake: Technological Claims
Timon Beyes (Editor) , Claus Pias (Editor) , Simon Denny (Editor) , Robin Holt (Editor) , Bettina Steinbrügge (Editor) , 2023 Milan , 204 p.Research output: Books and anthologies › Exhibition catalogues › Transfer
- Media Organize: A Companion to Technological Objects
Lisa Conrad (Editor) , Timon Beyes (Editor) , Armin Beverungen (Editor) , Claus Pias (Editor) , Simon Denny (Editor) , Bettina Steinbrügge (Editor) , 2021 Hamburg , 196 p.Research output: Books and anthologies › Conference proceedings › Transfer
- Niklas Luhmann am OVG Lüneburg: Zur Entstehung der Systemtheorie
Timon Beyes (Editor) , Martin Warnke (Editor) , Claus Pias (Editor) , Wolfgang Hagen (Editor) , 2021 Berlin , 136 p.Research output: Books and anthologies › Collected editions and anthologies › Research
- The Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology, and Organization Studies
Timon Beyes (Editor) , Claus Pias (Editor) , Robin Holt (Editor) , 2020 Oxford , 538 p.Research output: Books and anthologies › Collected editions and anthologies › Transfer
Journal contributions
- Soziale Farbe (IV): Haut
Timon Beyes (Author) , 01.12.2025 , in: Merkur, 79, 919 , p. 16-25 , 10 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research
- Soziale Farbe (III): Blau machen
Timon Beyes (Author) , 01.09.2025 , in: Merkur, 79, 916 , p. 50-60 , 11 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research
- Soziale Farbe (II): Farbe an der Arbeit
Timon Beyes (Author) , 01.07.2025 , in: Merkur, 79, 914 , p. 21-31 , 11 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research
- Soziale Farbe (I): Mocha Mousse, die Unordnung der Farbe und die Ordnung des Sozialen
Timon Beyes (Author) , 02.05.2025 , in: Merkur, 79, 912 , p. 39-49Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research
- Organizing Counterpublics: Scenes from Contemporary Russia
Anna Kalinina (Author) , Timon Beyes (Author) , 01.12.2024 , in: Theory, Culture & Society, 41, 7-8 , p. 57-71 , 15 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Contributions to collected editions/anthologies
- Autonomie organisieren: Organisation als Medium der Kunst
Timon Beyes (Author) , 09.12.2025 1 ed. , p. 73-90 , 17 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Chapter › Research › peer-review
- Determinismus und Immanenz: Zur Kritik der Organisation in digitalen Kulturen
Timon Beyes (Author) , 01.01.2023 Lüneburg , p. 62-80 , 19 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Research
- Ten claims on behalf of technology
Timon Beyes (Author) , Robin Holt (Author) , 01.01.2023 Milan , p. 95-104 , 10 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contribution of Exihibition catalogues › Transfer
- Mysteriöse Kisten und Vertrautheitsreste: Black Box Organisation
Timon Beyes (Author) , 01.01.2023 Weilerswist , p. 119-137 , 19 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Chapter › Research
- Noticing Colour: Shades of a Chromatic Empiricism
Timon Beyes (Author) , 22.09.2022 Oxford , p. 127-152 , 26 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Research › peer-review
Activities
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Going adrift in dystopian conditions: Organizing protest and resistance in present-day Russia
Anna Kalinina (Speaker) , Timon Beyes (Speaker)
→Activity: Conference Presentations › Research
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Situation, envelopment, attunement: A critique of organizational atmospherics
Timon Beyes (Speaker)
Activity: talk or presentation in privat or public events › Research
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sub-theme convenor: Digital Capitalism: Grappling with Silicon Valley
Timon Beyes (Speaker) , Armin Beverungen (Speaker) , Paula Bialski (Speaker)
→Activity: Conference Presentations › Research
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Calculated Publics
Timon Beyes (Keynote Speaker)
Activity: talk or presentation in privat or public events › Research
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Black Box Imagination: Zur Undurchschaubarkeit von Organisation
Timon Beyes (Speaker)
Activity: talk or presentation in privat or public events › Research
Press / Media
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Can schools become boundaryless spaces?
1 Media contributionPress/Media: Press/Media
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Etwas von der Offenheit und Undefiniertheit des Provisoriums beibehalten: ein Interview mit Timon Beyes
Interviewed oncePress/Media: Press/Media
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Gespräch: Weniger planen, mehr zulassen
1 Media contributionPress/Media: Press/Media
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Achtung Gefahr!
1 Media contributionPress/Media: Press/Media
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Was macht die Stadt zur Stadt?
1 time citedPress/Media: Press/Media
Courses
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If you would like to participate please send an email to haniel_esa@leuphana.de until April 1st, 2026 (max. 1 page covering your motivation why you would like to attend the Summer Academy; please also indicate your study program in the letter). You will be notified until April 3rd . The maximum number of Lüneburg participants is 10. +++
2026’s European Summer Academy will investigate the organizational conditions and capacities of urban cultural production in times of budget cuts and political antagonism. How can cultural and artistic milieus, scenes, organizations and sites respond to current economic and political struggles? How do urban cultural ecologies change under such conditions, and how are the spaces, atmospheres and infrastructures altered in which any form of cultural organization is embedded and to which it contributes?
The Summer Academy will take the predicament of Berlin’s cultural sector as empirical ground. For 2025, Berlin’s cultural budget has been slashed by 12%, with further cuts announced for the year of 2026. Impacting both established cultural institutions and independent art spaces, the cuts constitute a major blow for a city whose reputation is largely based on a thriving and globally renowned cultural scene. They affect livelihoods and modes of organizing culture. At the same time and like elsewhere, Berlin’s cultural and artistic milieus are marked by increasing political antagonisms and struggle. The rise of right-wing populism and its call to defund everything that is critical of a nationalist understanding of culture threatens the comparably diverse sphere of art and culture and its capacity for irreverent, subversive and creative thought and action. Moreover, the violent disputes unfolding in the Middle East have provoked deep disagreement within the cultural field and have led to increasingly interventionist attempts to govern artistic expression.
The Summer Academy will be dedicated to these developments. It will ask students to become participant observers and ethnographers of the everyday, so as to study – on their feet, with compassion, care and a critical sensibility – how cultural and artistic sites might find responses to the current travails, and how urban cultural milieus and atmosphere are re-shaped by them. To do so, the Summer Academy will be fieldwork-based and work together with a number of cultural sites, organizations and collectives. Students will venture out into the city, conducting fieldwork and translating their empirical findings into exhibits of cultural and artistic ecologies in turbulent times.
Course structure
After an (online) introduction/preparation session, the course is organized in four parts and runs over 5 full days, which consist of thematic discussions, guest lectures, preparatory methodological exercises, on‑site visits and fieldwork, project analysis and putting together an exhibit of findings. Please note that this is an intense week of fieldwork and discussion, in which you're expected to fully participate.
Through mixed groups made up from participants from the various participating universities, the learning process centres on the fieldwork on and on cultural sites in the urban context of Berlin, which are reflected conceptually and personally by respectively drawing upon the preparatory readings and group reflections.
Part 1 consists of exploring concepts of and methodologies of urban cultural production and milieus.
Part 2 consists of fieldwork and empirical research based on specific locations in the city of Berlin.
In Part 3, we develop and analyze empirical findings through interweaving observations with findings from literature research.
Part 4 is for preparing, setting up the exhibition and presenting the findings.
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The aim of this course is to take participants through the process of (international) journal publication. There are two aspects to this. First, considering the nature of academic knowledge production (using (and being used by) concepts, categories, methods etc.), and secondly the craft of writing and participating in the peer review process. As such this is not just a practical ‘how to’ course, but also requires participants to consider actively and reflexively the uses to which academic knowledge is being put, and the relational conditions of ‘its’ generation.
There will be input presentation, but the emphasis will be a discursive, dialogical one, involving participants in conversations, presentations and group work. Participants should come prepared to discuss not only others but their own work, and to comment in constructive and substantive debate.
The intent therefore is not just to take participants through the demands of producing written work suitable for academic publishing, but to do so having experienced critical engagement with the nature of theory, concepts, methods and claims.
The lecturers have extensive editorial experience in journals of social theory, cultural theory and organization theory. Timon is a Senior Editor of Organization Studies and has also published in journals such as Theory, Culture & Society (Sociology/Cultural Studies), Grey Room (cultural theory), the German-speaking Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft and Leviathan. Robin is a former editor-in-chief of Organization Studies and was/is on a number of editorial boards of influential journals.
The discussion on the nature of knowledge production will take in ideas from cultural and social theory, and studies of media and technology. Methodologically, the lecturer has largely been involved in qualitative work. The emphasis will not be on the technicalities of methodological approaches or methods, but on the kind of knowledge they create.
The plan is to involve colleagues or guest faculty to enrich the course with further experiences.
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Importantly, the Master Forum is a space for collective learning and peer feedback; seeing how go about their thesis will help you with yours. So the main aim is to receive productive critical feedback – both from instructors and from student peers - on ongoing thesis projects.
There will also be room for students searching for a theme (and supervisors) and developing an exposé (research question, methods, conceptual frame etc.).
Students who have successfully passed the Master Forum in the winter term are invited to present and receive feedback on a chapter/an excerpt from their ongoing thesis, and on questions they now encounter.
Students who have not yet submitted and presented their exposé can do so to obtain the necessary credits. (Please note that the main discussion of practical or even technical issues of thesis writing takes place in the winter term.)
While this will ultimately depend on the number of students participating, students should expect to have around 30 minutes in total for the presentation and discussion of their projects, and presentations themselves should last between 10 and 15 minutes, allowing plenty of time for discussion.
Students are asked to attend all sessions of the Master Forum. Please be ready to provide your fellow students with productive critical feedback on their projects!
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Following up on the winter term’s introductory course to Organization, Society and the Arts, the course more systematically investigates the organizational nature of forms and processes of artistic production and cultural labour.
To do so, the course is loosely structured through different understandings of organization and what they help us see, think and understand. These understandings range from classic theorizations of organization as formal organizations structured through hierarchy, membership and organizational purpose via notions of processual, ‘partial’ and networked organization to understandings of organizing as spatially, affectively or atmospherically constituted.
Each approach will be discussed theoretically and empirically by bringing together conceptual texts with empirical studies or examples.
The students are expected to prepare the sessions by engaging with the preparatory literature uploaded on mystudy. They will also be asked to prepare specific sessionsn (in groups) by way of case-based presentations and reflections.
The course will take place weekly. Sessions entail input by the lecturers, class discussion, project work and group work phases, presentations and break-out sessions.