Federico Brandmayr

I am a Lecturer in Political Science and Sociology at Yale University. My research examines how people come to distrust or reject scientists, experts, and intellectuals—what drives these reactions, what effects they have, and how they reshape the production of knowledge. I am currently writing a book titled Exculpatory Knowledge? How and Why Social Science Becomes Apologetic, which explores what it means to say that research in the social sciences excuses, justifies, or normalizes unjust practices and institutions.

I graduated in political science from the University of Trieste and completed master and doctoral degrees in sociology and philosophy of social science at Sorbonne University. I previously worked as an ATER (research and teaching fellow) at Sorbonne University, as a research associate at CRASSH, University of Cambridge, as a postdoctoral associate at the MacMillan Center at Yale University, and as a research fellow at LUISS in Rome.

Publications

The Left and the Right in the Ethnographic Imagination. Poetics (2025).

Roots of Distrust: Opposition to Science-Based Policy-Making during the Xylella Emergency in Salento. Cultural Sociology (2025).

Disciplinary Identity and the Idea of a Unified Social Science: A Survey of British Academics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 111 (2025): 18-30.

From Disappointment to Audience Switch: Giorgio Agamben and the Pandemic. American Journal of Cultural Sociology 13 (2024): 433-455. 

A Stranger in His Own Field? Bellah’s Radical Critique of Science. The American Sociologist 54 (2023): 579–590.

The Political Flexibility of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Sociologica 16, no. 3 (2022): 85-104.

The Legal Significance of Theories of Public Trust in Science: An Illustration from Italy. in Trust Matters: Cross-Disciplinary Essays, edited by Raquel Barradas de Freitas and Sergio Lo Iacono, Hart Publishing, 2021, pp. 209-228.

Are Theories Politically Flexible? Sociological Theory 39.2 (2021): pp. 103-125.

Social Science as Apologia. European Journal of Social Theory 24.3 (2021): pp. 319–337.

Explanations and Excuses in French Sociology. European Journal of Social Theory 24.3 (2021): pp. 374–393.

Public Epistemologies and Intellectual Interventions in Contemporary Italy. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 34 (2021): pp. 47–68.

When Boundary Organisations Fail: Identifying Scientists and Civil Servants in L’Aquila Earthquake Trial. Science as Culture 30.2 (2021): pp. 237-260.

Hétérogénéité et flexibilité dans les usages politiques de l’argument de l’« excuse sociologique ». Zilsel, 4.2 (2018), 59-91.

Order and Conflict Theories of Science as Competing Ideologies. Social Epistemology 32.3 (2018): pp. 175-195.

How Social Scientists Make Causal Claims in Court: Evidence from the L’Aquila Trial. Science, Technology & Human Values 42.3 (2017): pp. 346-380.

Reviews and review essays

The Crisis of Expertise, by Gil Eyal, European Journal of Social Theory 24.2 (2021): pp. 306–310.

The Dark Side of Podemos? by Josh Booth and Patrick Baert, The Sociological Review (24 June 2019).

Socialisme et sociologie, by Bruno Karsenti et Cyril Lemieux, Revue française de science politique 68.1 (2018): pp.148-150.

Pour la sociologie. Et pour en finir avec une prétendue ’culture de l’excuse’, by Bernard Lahire. Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia 57.4 (2016): pp. 824-828.

Masters of Uncertainty. Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth, by Phaedra Daipha. Revue française de sociologie 57.3 (2016): pp. 597-600.

Globalizing Knowledge: Intellectuals, Universities, and Publics in Transformation, by Michael D. Kennedy. European Journal of Sociology 56.3 (2015): pp. 498-508. 

Public writings

Social Scientists: A New Priestly Caste? The Philosopher, Spring 2021, pp. 43-47.

Are the Experts Responsible for Bad Disaster Response? A Few Lessons for the Coronavirus Outbreak from L’Aquila. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 9.5: 1-8, May 2020. 

Contact

federico.brandmayr [AT] yale.edu

federicobrandmayr [AT] gmail.com