Prof. Dr. Feiwel Kupferberg is professor of educational sociology at the Danish University of Education in Copenhagen. He received his M.A. at Stockholm University in 1971 and his Ph.D. at Aalborg University, 1995. He has worked for twenty-five years within the areas of international and cultural studies broadly defined. During the last ten years he has worked particularly in the areas of entrepreneurship, migration and professional socialization, with a focus upon qualitative and biographical methods. In the area of entrepreneurship, he has in particular focused upon issues of career changes and existential choice as a framework for understanding why and how some individuals or groups become entrepreneurs. Another area has been the role of migration and exile for creativity, novel ideas and new business concepts.

Feiwel Kupferberg´s expertise is concentrated in the areas of creativity, careers and migration. He teaches in the fields of sociological theory, biography research and the sociology of creativity.
He has been a visiting professor at University of California at Berkeley, Max Planck Institute of Human Development in Berlin, Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Social Research, Moscow State University and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He has given lectures and key note addresses at a number of universities in Northern America, Western and Eastern Europe.

He received the Torgny Segerstedt Price for best sociological article published in Sweden 1995. He is a member of the board of the ISSR Research Groups Biography and Society and Education and Society and of the advisory board of the European Journal of Social Quality. During the academic year of 1997/98 he held a Research Grant from the Danish Social Science Research Council for the project „Micro-Foundations of Societal Transformations.“. In June 1999 he received a one-year travel grant from the Danish Research Council for the project „Nation-states and Professions. The Rise and Fall of the East German Intelligentsia.“

From December 1997 to December 2000 he was Danish project leader for the TSER- project under EU „Self-employment activities concerning women and minorities: their success or failure in relation to social citizenship policies.“

Short List of Recent Publications:

Feiwel Kupferberg (Forthcoming) Voksenlivets kreative kriser. Biografi og kreativitet i det moderne ( The creative crises of adult life. Biography and Creativity in Modernity). Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel

Feiwel Kupferberg (Forthcoming) “Ethnic entrepreneurship as innovation. Comparative biographical analyses, theory and policy implications. “ In Prue Chamberlayne, Joanna Bornat and Ursula Apitzsch (eds.) Biographical methods and professional practice. Bristol: The Policy Press.

Feiwel Kupferberg (2003) “ The Established and the Newcomers: What Makes Immigrant and Women Entrepreneurs so Special?” International Review of Sociology 13 (1): 89 - 104

Feiwel Kupferberg (2003) ”From Berlin to Hollywood: German-Speaking Refugees in the American Film Industry.” PP. 139 – 154 in Edward Timms & Jon Hughes (eds.) Intellectual Migration and National Socialism in the English-Speaking World. Wien & New York: Springer.

Feiwel Kupferberg (2002) “Entreprenörskap som existentiell handling” (Entrepreneurship as existential act) Sociologisk Forskning 39( 2): 68 – 103.

Feiwel Kupferberg & Mai Ottosen (ed.) (2001) Biografiforskning (Biography research). Temanummer (Special Issue) af Dansk Sociologi, 11 (3), 2001.

Dieter Bögenhold, Birgit Hodenius, Feiwel Kupferberg & Rudolf Woderich.
Passagen in die Selbständigkeit (2001). Hagen: Fernuniversität- Gesamthochschule in Hagen.

Feiwel Kupferberg (2000) “Selbständigkeit und beruflicher Neuanfang: Die Affinität von Selbständigkeits- und Biographiforschung.“ Hässische Blätter, No. 1: 14 – 25.

Feiwel Kupferberg (1998) “Humanistic Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial Commitment.” Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 10: 171 – 187.

Feiwel Kupferberg (1998) “ Models of Creativity Abroad. Migrants, Strangers and Travellers. ” European Archive of Sociology. XXXIX: 179 – 206.

Feiwel Kupferberg (1997) ”Soziologie des beruflichen Neuanfang: Von akademicher Lehrtätigkeit zu beruflicher Selbständigkeit.“ PP. 188 – 207 in Michael Thomas (ed.) Selbständige, Gründer, Unternehmer. Berlin: Berliner Debatte Wissenschaft Verlag.