Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Department of Social Sciences

Organisation (OKZ)

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences → Department of Social Sciences → Sociology of Work, Political Economy and Technological Change

Function/Field

Researcher

Office

Universitätsstraße 3b , Raum 137

Postal adress

Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin

Office hours: on request

Research

Main areas of work

• Stratification and social inequality, esp. elite sociology
• Sociology of crisis and conflict
• Work, economic and industrial sociology
• Political Economy
• Critical subject and social theory

Research projects

LEADERSHIP IN CRISIS – CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP?

Decision-Making Power, Responsibility, and Societal (De-)Stabilization in the Polycrisis

Geopolitical conflicts, technological disruption, and ecological tipping points – often summarized under the term polycrisis – are placing visible pressure on societal decision-making processes. In this late-modern constellation, expectations toward societal leadership are shifting. Between growing demands for decisive action, structural resilience, and strategic foresight on the one hand, and increasing scepticism toward societal elites on the other, a tension emerges that raises fundamental questions about legitimacy, responsibility, and the governance of societies in times of crisis.
The research project investigates how interpretations of the societal polycrisis emerge within decision-making processes, patterns of action, and social interactions among executive leaders, and how these interpretations are translated into concrete leadership practices. It analyses how position-specific patterns of meaning and action take shape, whether and how these differ across sectors, and which implicit visions of society they bear. The guiding assumption is that, in the context of the polycrisis, societal leadership arises neither primarily from individual dispositions nor from abstract systemic logics, but from structurally embedded decision-making positions in which power, responsibility, and relations of legitimacy intersect under tension.
Methodologically, the project combines qualitative interviews with holders of leadership positions in both the political and economic sector with ethnographically informed participant observation of selected events within the field. The empirical investigation – informed by sociology of knowledge and social positions – aims at a reconstruction of contemporary leadership types and their respective interpretative patterns.
Overall, the project conceptualizes crisis leadership as a structured practice of action and decision-making in which characteristic orientations of societal governance – as well as dynamics of potential destabilization – are produced. In doing so, it opens a critical perspective on the future viability of contemporary forms of leadership facing the erosion of late-modern certainties and the possible emergence of a broader crisis of leadership in the transition toward a postmodern crisis society.

Responsible: Prof. Philipp Staab, Rahel Busch
Duration: 09/2025 – 08/2029

Teaching

• Summer semester 2026, BA seminar (2h/week): Between power and responsibility: Perspectives of elite sociology, Humboldt University of Berlin

• Winter semester 2025/26, BA seminars (4h/week in total): Stratification, Social Inequality and Demography, Humboldt University of Berlin

• Summer semester 2024, BA seminar (2h/week): Operating Temperature: Theory and Practice of Late Modern Conflict, Humboldt University of Berlin

• Winter semester 2024/25, BA advanced seminar (4h/week): Sociological Perspectives on the Ecological Crisis and Transformation, Humboldt University of Berlin

Publications

• (2020): »Betriebliche« Kontrolle der Crowd, Digital Society Blog of HIIG, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3828496
• (2017): Topografie und regionale Kontextanalyse des Rechtsextremismus in Thüringen. Projektbericht, ed. by KomRex - Zentrum für Rechtsextremismusforschung, Demokratiebildung und gesellschaftliche Integration, Jena (with H. Best, A. Salheiser, F. Schmidtke, L. Vogel und M. Miehlke) (Link)

About me

Since 08/2024: Research assistant at the Chair of Sociology of Work, Political Economy and Technological Change, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin

10/2020 - 01/2024: Student assistant at the Chair of Sociology of the Future of Work, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Humboldt Univerity of Berlin

04/2020 - 04/2021: Student assistant in the research field of Sustainable Business, Value Chains and Consumption, Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), Berlin

10/2019 - 12/2019: Internship in the research project ‘Platform Organisation in the Digital Sharing Economy - Forms of Design, Effects, Social-Ecological Transformation Perspectives’ (BMBF), Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), Berlin

04/2019 - 08/2024: M. A. Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin and Sciences Po Paris, France

07/2018 - 03/2019: Student assistant in the research project "The measured life. Productive and counterproductive consequences of quantification in the digitally optimised society" (VolkswagenStiftung) at the Chair of General and Theoretical Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena

09/2017 - 12/2017: Student assistant in research project on stratification of political (functional) elites, Chair of Methods of Empirical Social Research and Structure Analysis of Modern Societies (Prof. Heinrich Best)

04/2017 - 12/2017: Student assistant in the research project 'Topography of Right-wing Extremism in Thuringia' at the Centre for Research on Right-Wing Extremism, Democracy Education and Societal Integration (KomRex), Friedrich Schiller University Jena

04/2016 - 03/2023: Scholarship holder of the Heinrich Böll Foundation

10/2015 - 03/2019: B. A. Sociology, Philosophy and Political Science, Friedrich Schiller University Jena and University of Eastern Finland, Finnland

09/2014 - 08/2015: Volunteer Year in Politics, Heinrich Boell Foundation Lower Saxony, Hanover