Wolfgang Wagner (born 1949 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian social psychologist, currently professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Formerly he was at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, and affiliated with the Department of Social Psychology and Methodology at the University of San Sebastián, Spain. He is renowned for his contributions to the Theory of Social Representations.
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Biography
Wolfgang Wagner studied psychology, philosophy and cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna, Austria, where he received his PhD. He trained in sociology at the Vienna Institute for Advanced Studies and took the position of Assistant Professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz 1979 where he also received his habilitation. He has two children, Joy Pamela who is a politician in Austria, and Joscha David, an engineer. His brother, Günter Paul, is an Evolutionary Biologist. Since 2018 he is professor of psychology at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
He is founding editor of Papers on Social Representations and board member of several scholarly journals. As a social scientists he has been expert consultant to the European Union’s DG XII and panel member for European Research Council. He is known for his contribution to the Theory of Social Representations, Societal psychology, Public understanding of science and psychological essentialism.