Biography

I am a sociologist primarily interested in the (comparative) analysis of social inequality and intergenerational mobility. Before starting the MW Fellowship at the EUI, I worked as a research associate at the University Bremen (UB) from 2009. Working alongside several colleagues, I tried to contribute to inequality research by conceptually and methodologically broadening the empirical study of social stratification research.
Employing Bourdieu's theoretical framework and sequence analysis methodology, I studied class trajectories in Germany to understand typical changes in the membership of social class over time. In another project we analyzed intergenerational mobility in the United States and Germany, employing panel data to study three instead of the usual two generations. After a visit to the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in 2013, I studied the ways in which educational expansion affected intergenerational social class and educational mobility over time in the United States.  During my time at UB, I taught several courses on social inequality, stratification and social theory. Beyond this, working with my colleagues and fellow students, the exchange of ideas and numerous discussions were vital for my academic formation.
Since 2010, I  have been an affiliated PhD student at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. My dissertation answers the question of whether and how structural change affected chances of social mobility in two post-industrial countries. While most studies in this line of research employ the EGP schema which does not allow differentiating properly between interpersonal and organizational-technical occupations, I employed a new class schema which builds on the EGP as well as the Esping-Andersen and Oesch classes. As such, it allows for the differentiation of high and low class positions which are similar with regard to resources and employment relations but differ with regard to the dominant work logic. Employing this class schema, I analyze intergenerational class mobility in Germany and the United States over most of the last century. The empirical analysis is embedded in a narration which relates the occupational change with the evolution of social mobility chances.