Alex Demirović received his PhD in philosophy with a dissertation on Marxist aesthetics. In 1992 he habilitated with an epistemological study on the development of Critical Theory in the 1950s and 1960s: The Nonconformist Intellectual. From 1990 to 2001, he was a staff member at the Institute for Social Research, where he was involved in empirical research on new social movements and the development of democracy, on right-wing radicalism and racism, and on the development of higher education. Further research topics include democratic theory, economic democracy, and critical social theory. He has held numerous visiting professorships and is a member of the academic advisory board of Attac Germany, a member of the advisory board of the Federation of Democratic Scholars, and a fellow of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

During his stay at the Humanities and Social Change Center Berlin, Alex Demirović addressed the question of the relationship between the social division of labor and democracy from the perspectives of political theory history and political sociology.