Bio Note: Professor of sociology at the University of Lausanne and research associate at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) de Paris, Laurence Kaufmann works in an interdisciplinary manner on topics such as public opinion, communication, first-person authority, social cognition and collective intentionality. Her main interests concern the ontology of social phenomena from a sociological and historical point of view – how institutions emerge and change over time – as well as from a philosophical and psychological perspective – what human abilities are necessary to constitute and maintain institutions. http://www.unil.ch/unisciences/LaurenceKaufmann

Affiliation: University of Lausanne, Switzerland