About
The School of Social & Political Sciences established the Frisby Memorial Lectures in 2012. The lectures are named in honour of Prof. David Frisby, a highly respected scholar, a very popular lecturer and for many years, a leading figure in the history of Sociology at Glasgow.
His work included pioneering investigations into all aspects of the experience of life in the modern city as well as definitive accounts of the work of key writers in the field of German social theory, many of whom became known to an English speaking audience largely as a result of his translations and expositions.
The Frisby Memorial Lectures are free to attend and open to all. We wish to acknowledge the support of the MacFie bequest in making these lectures possible.
Previous Lectures
2023
Prof. Ben Carrington (USC Annenberg School of Communication):
'Against the urgency of people dying, what is the point of sociology? Reflections on the sociological imagination in a moment of crisis.'
2019
Prof. Les Back (Goldsmiths, University of London):
'What we learn from music: Hidden Musical Lives and the Craft of Understanding Society.'
2017
Prof. Wolfgang Streeck (Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne):
'Imaging Europe: Beaucratic Narratives and Ideological Dreams'
2016
Prof. Nancy Scheper-Hughes (University of California, Berkeley):
'Towards an Anthropology of Evil'
2015
Prof. Sylvia Walby (UNESCO Chair of Gender Research, University of Lancaster)
'Making Sense of the Crisis: Is the Financial Crisis Cascading into a Democratic Crisis in Europe?'
2014
Prof. Nancy Fraser (Cambridge University and New School for Social Research)
'Behind Marx's 'hidden abode': Toward an expanded conception of Capitalism'
2013
Prof. Erik Olin Wright (University of Wisconsin):
'Transforming Capitalism Through Real Utopias'
2012
Prof. Richard Sennett (London School of Economics and New York University):
'The Public Realm, a Century After Simmel'
Who was David Frisby?
David Frisby was one of the most foremost scholars and interpreters of German Social Theory, a pioneering analyst and historian of many of the defining characteristics of modern social life, and a widely respected and much loved lecturer. His particular contributions to the social sciences include the key expository accounts of the work of theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer (see, for example, his Fragments of Modernity); the translation (initially with Tom Bottomore) of Georg Simmel's masterwork The Philosophy of Money, and for which he provided an extended and definitive introduction; and shrewd, scholarly explorations of life and culture in the great metropolitan areas of Europe and America (see, for example, his Cityscapes of Modernity).
His writings themselves translated into numerous languages, and he served as visiting professor at the Universities of New York, Konstanz, Yale and Princeton. A panaromic edited collection of writings on Berlin, on which he worked with Prof. Iain Boyd Whyte (Edinburgh), was published in 2012 by University of California Press.
At Glasgow
David Frisby was, for many years, Professor of Sociologt at the University of Glasgow, and also acted as Head of Department. This page has been established in order to make publically available some key resources concerned with David Frisby's life and work, with the help and support of his former student Dr Georgia Giannakopoulou.
Bibliography
- A bibliography of David Frisby's writing, including unpublished material, can be found here.
- A late essay by Frisby - 'Streetscapes of Modernity' - can be found here
- An extended expository essay, by Dr Giannakopoulou, drawing on Prof. Frisby's original notes and commentaries, and focused on the concept of the 'streetscape', can be found here
Unpublished addresses
The following link to three previously unpublished addresses by Prof. Frisby: