Hans Joas is Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at Humboldt University Berlin and Visiting Professor of Sociology and Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from Freie Universität Berlin in 1979 (G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought, MIT Press, 1985, 1997). Among his numerous prizes are the Max Planck Research Award in 2015; the Prix Paul Ricoeur in 2017 and the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award of the German Sociological Association in 2022. His last book in English is The Power of the Sacred. An Alternative to the Narrative of Disenchantment, Oxford UP, 2021.
Andreas Pettenkofer studied sociology at the Free University of Berlin, the 'Ecole des Hautes 'Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the University of Bielefeld, and received his PhD at the Max Weber Centre, University of Erfurt. After positions at the University of G"ottingen and at the Fernuniversit"at in Hagen, he is now a fellow at the Max Weber Centre, University of Erfurt, where he heads the group "The Local Politicization of Global Norms".