Heidelberg · São Paulo

Eduardo Altheman

I study the changing forms of capitalism and authoritarianism - and the futures they make imaginable or impossible.

Four transparent architectural study plates: context, structure, space and experience

01 / Profile

Portrait of Eduardo Altheman Camargo Santos
Heidelberg · 2025

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS), Heidelberg University.

My research moves between sociology, political economy and Critical Theory. I am interested in how cutting-edge capitalist technologies reorganise labour, subjectivity and political imagination, and how these transformations streamline contemporary authoritarianism.

02 / Research

Lines of Inquiry

01

Critical Theory

Mobilising the Frankfurt School as a living method for diagnosing domination, ideology and unrealised possibilities in the present.

02

Platform Capitalism

Examining platforms not simply as technologies or firms, but as a social form reorganising labour, class, culture and everyday conduct.

03

Fascism & Authoritarianism

Tracing how contemporary authoritarianism changes with capitalism, from mass integration to digitally organised atomisation, resentment and exclusion.

04

Apocalyptic Studies

Studying the apocalypse as a political grammar through which societies organise fear, futurity, catastrophe and the unequal distribution of survival.

05

Neoliberalism

Approaching neoliberalism as a political rationality and form of subjectivation that extends economic imperatives far beyond the market.

06

Political Economy

Connecting economic forms to power, institutions and social experience, with particular attention to labour, monopoly and the Global South.

03 / Publications

Selected Work

04 / Teaching

Courses & Seminars

Graduate Teaching

PPGS · University of São Paulo

2023

Crítica da razão neoliberal

Graduate Program in Sociology, University of São Paulo · co-taught with Laurindo Dias Minhoto

2021

O neoliberalismo: teoria, história e atualidade de um projeto

Graduate Program in Sociology, University of São Paulo

2020

O neoliberalismo: teoria, história e atualidade de um projeto

Graduate Program in Sociology, University of São Paulo

Earlier Teaching

Sociology, Anthropology and Political Economy at Faculdade Sudoeste Paulistano (2017), alongside undergraduate teaching assistance in Sociology II and Contemporary Sociological Thought at the University of São Paulo (2012–2017).

05 / Translations

Texts in Circulation

06 / Public Engagement

Ideas in Public

07 / Curriculum vitae

Academic Trajectory

2006—2011

BA in Social Sciences

University of São Paulo

2011—2013

MA in Sociology

University of São PauloThesis: A economia do poder e o poder da economia: neoliberalismo e governamentalidade em Foucault

2014—2018

PhD in Sociology

University of São PauloDissertation: Por uma Teoria Crítica do Neoliberalismo: Marcuse no século XXI

2014—2015

Visiting Researcher

Goethe University Frankfurt · hosted by Thomas Lemke

2016

Visiting Scholar

Duke University · supervised by Fredric Jameson

2019—2024

Postdoctoral Researcher

Department of Sociology · University of São Paulo

2024—present

Postdoctoral Fellow

International Herbert Marcuse Society

2024—2025

Research Fellow

CAPAS · Heidelberg University

2025—present

Postdoctoral Researcher

CAPAS · Heidelberg University
Full Academic CVPDF

08 / Prizes & Awards

Prizes & Awards