I am a cultural and economic sociologist. I hold a BA in Sociology and an MA in Economic and Financial Sociology from Goethe University Frankfurt and a PhD from the University of Hamburg. In my dissertation, Kein Müll. Eine Soziologie vom Wert des Wertlosen (Not Waste. A Sociology of the Value of the Valueless), I combine a cultural-historical synthesis with an ethnographic investigation of upcycling as a late modern practice of value production from waste materials. My research draws on qualitative and ethnographic methods with a focus on cultural and economic sociology, sustainability, and social transformation. Before joining the DFG Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Futures of Sustainability” at the University of Hamburg, I taught sociology at the Chair of Society and Social Change under Sighard Neckel. I am co-author of Die Globale Finanzklasse. Business, Karriere, Kultur in Frankfurt und Sydney (Campus, 2018).

My current research takes me to a remote place in southern Greenland. Just above the small settlement of Narsaq, a large geological formation cuts through the stark Arctic landscape: the Ilímaussaq Complex, one of the world’s largest deposits of heavy rare earth elements, including terbium, dysprosium and neodymium. These minerals power electric motors, wind turbines, and AI data centers—forming the material foundation of most contemporary climate technologies. Yet their extraction unfolds in a region already affected by climate change, it threatens fragile ecosystems, provokes local protests as well as global geopolitical rivalries, and thereby challenges the futures of those who inhabit it. Through a multi-sited ethnography, I follow the entangled trajectories of these rare earths from developing extraction sites to the production facilities of modern climate technologies and techno-solutionist think tanks. At the heart of my project lies a paradox: it is the very destruction of ecological habitats that opens access to the materials on which most contemporary imaginaries of climate technologies seem to depend.

Summer Term 2024: Kapitalismus und Klimakrise: Soziologische Analysen (Capitalism and the Climate Crisis: Sociological Analyses), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Winter Term 2023/24: Konsum und Abfall. Der feine Unterschied des Werts (Consumption and Waste: The Fine Distinction of Value), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Summer Term 2023: Vom Kapitalismus zum Kapitalozän. Leben und Arbeiten in der kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsgesellschaft (From Capitalism to Capitalocene: Life and Work in Capitalist Society), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Winter Term 2022/23: Waren und Müll. Eine Soziologie vom Wert der Dinge (Commodities and Waste: A Sociology of the Value of Things), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Summer Term 2022: Arbeit und Erschöpfung. Zur Ökonomisierung von Lebensstilen (Work and Exhaustion: On the Economization of Lifestyles), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Winter Term 2021/22: Aufwertung und Entwertung. Die Werteökonomie im Gegenwartskapitalismus (Valorization and Devaluation: The Economy of Values in Contemporary Capitalism), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Summer Term 2021: Globaler Kapitalismus, globale Ungleichheit (Global Capitalism, Global Inequality), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Winter Term 2020/21: Die politische Ökonomie des Mülls (The Political Economy of Waste), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Summer Term 2020: Globalisierung, Kapitalismus und moderne Arbeitswelt (Globalization, Capitalism, and the Modern World of Work), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Winter Term 2019/20: Soziologie und Kritik. Klassische und aktuelle Positionen (Sociology and Critique: Classical and Contemporary Positions), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Summer Term 2019: Soziale Klassen und Ungleichheit im globalen Kapitalismus (Social Classes and Inequality in Global Capitalism), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Winter Term 2018/19: Die globale Wirtschaftselite (The Global Economic Elite), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg

Summer Term 2018: Soziologische Theorien sozialer Ungleichheit (Sociological Theories of Social Inequality), B.A. seminar, University of Hamburg