Prof. Dr. Darío Montero

Darío Montero studied sociology and philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and, after completing a master's degree in public policy at the University of Erfurt, earned his doctorate at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. His academic work shows the influence of phenomenological-hermeneutic approaches in philosophy, German Critical Theory, and historical sociology, focusing on the study of the formation and development of modern society in general and of national-democratic cultures in particular, with special emphasis on the Chilean case.

He has written scientific articles on democracy and political cultures, social movements and crises of legitimacy, nationalism and museums, and social acceleration and modern society. In terms of monographs, he co-edited, together with Mauro Basaure, the book Investigación y teoría crítica de la sociedad actual (Editorial Antropos, 2018) and is the author of La formación de la sociedad moderna. Tomo I: Nacionalismo e individualismo (RIL Editores, 2023) — an ongoing project conceived in three volumes.

Professor Montero currently works as a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at the Universidad de Chile and coordinates the research group Teoría Social Hoy, part of the same Department.

Darío Montero was invited for a short-term research fellowship at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt for the period from the 5th to the 25th of July 2026. This fellowship shall enable him to work on his research project on Latin American indigenous notions of (social) energy, with special emphasis on the Mapuche culture and its notion of newen, and to discuss it with the members of the Centre and colleagues of the project on social energy at the University of Jena, such as Nikolai Repenning-Janssen, who works on conceptions coming from south east Asia and their connections to a phenomenological understanding of experiences of social energy. 

In parallel, Dr. Montero will take part of the Roundtable “The place of Sociology in Critical Theory” —organized by Patrick O’Mahony and Hartmut Rosa— at the Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt, 16th – 18th of July 2026, and will work, together with Alexis Gros, on the Spanish translation and editing of Rosa essay “Acceleration, Resonance, Energy. The Missing Link in Critical Theory”, adding some other materials for its publication in the form of a book.