Since October 2012, I have been a Professor of Sociology with a focus on Markets, Organizations, and Governance at the University of Jena, Germany. After completing my studies in political science and economics at the University of Frankfurt/Main in 2002, I received my PhD in sociology in Bamberg in 2005. After postdoc positions at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and in Bamberg, I was granted a Schumpeter Fellowship by the Volkswagen Foundation in 2009. From 2009 to 2012, I was an Assistant Professor of Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Financial Markets at the University of Jena, and in 2012 I had a visiting fellowship at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. In 2015, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Sociology at Uppsala University.
My research centers on asking how values such as sustainability and responsibility are implemented in organizations, markets, and the economy: Do organizations become more responsible, does work become more decent, do markets become more moral, does the economy become more sustainable—and if so, how do these institutional changes occur, and how can they be explained? My four main research areas— sustainability and financial markets, corporate social responsibility, rating and rating agencies, and the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions—all bring together organizational sociology, economic sociology, and political economy. Being interested in processes of institutional change, I am grounded theoretically in the new institutionalism in sociology; my methodological leaning is towards qualitative research.