Steen Lybke

Sociologist and Ph.D. fellow at the Centre for Science & Faith, University of Copenhagen.

Education

2013: Graduated high school.
2014-2015: Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen.
2015-2021: Sociology at the University of Copenhagen.
2023: 1. part of a diploma in public governance.

Employment

2017: Danish Ministry of Education, student assistant
2018-2019: Institute of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, teaching assistant to prof. Lars Tønder.
2019-2020: The Academy for Talented Youths, teaching the course: Welfare, inequality, and social mobility).
2021-2023: Danish Ministry of Food Supply, Agriculture and Fishery, administrative officer.
2023-current: Ph.D. Fellow at the Center for Science and Faith, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen.

In my research I draw on insights from theology, philosophy, and sociology as I ponder the question: what is the good life in a time of ecological crisis?

In my research I investigate the kind of world-relation (Weltbeziehung) constituted in and through the dual movement of a – passive-receptive – sense of connectedness to other species, material entities, places, and the cosmos and an – active-intentional – orientation to the non-human or more-than-merely-human segments of the world. Moreover, I raise the question why it is such a struggle to recognize and appreciate this sense of connectedness on an individual as well as societal level. Finally, I give my account of how to encourage and advance in society the gratitude towards those features to life which humans depend on but cannot control.

In my conceptual framework I rely, on the one hand, on the field of Scandinavian Ecotheology and, on the other, on the tradition of Critical Theory mainly within sociology. Though with a focus on the works of K.E. Løgstrup, Ole Jensen, and Hartmut Rosa.

As of the spring of 2025 I am an associated phd fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt, where Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa is my supervisor.