Leading Sociology Professor Kathrin Zippel joins Freie Universität Berlin
Kathrin Susanne Zippel, a highly regarded professor of sociology, has been awarded an Einstein Strategic Professorship from the Einstein Foundation Berlin and will move to Freie Universität. She will take on a professorship in sociology with a focus on gender studies. Previously she was professor of sociology at Northeastern University in Boston. Her research interests include gender, science, and organizations, political sociology, labor, comparative sociology (US-Europe), and globalization.
With her Einstein Strategic Professorship Kathrin Zippel aims to enrich gender research in Berlin with empirical intersectional gender research from an internationally comparative, institutional perspective and thus strengthen its international appeal. She points out that comparisons between the United States, Germany, and Europe can shed light on why promoting gender and diversity justice is such a great challenge. Zippel says it is important to clarify why gender equality in important fields such as work, science, and politics is progressing slowly and very unevenly. Her research at Freie Universität will focus on equality and diversity measures as well as gender aspects of global change processes in science and education.
Kathrin Zippel first studied mathematics and political science at Universität Hamburg. In 1994 she earned a master’s degree in sociology from Ohio State University (USA) and in 2000 a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She then accepted a position as a postdoctoral fellow in the European Union Center of New York at Columbia University in New York. From 2001 to 2022 Zippel conducted research and taught at Northeastern University in Boston. She also taught in the Social Studies Program at Harvard University and in the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women and Sexuality at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Zippel was residential fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and the European University Institute in Florence, and held a Humboldt Research fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. In Berlin she was a guest at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and the SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2007 Zippel received the Victoria Schuck Award for Best Book on Women and Politics from the American Political Science Association. In 2019 the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation awarded her its prestigious Humboldt Alumni Award for the promotion of innovative network initiatives.
With its Einstein Strategic Professorships the Einstein Foundation Berlin recruits leading researchers from abroad who are of strategic importance in developing Berlin’s research environment. The Einstein Strategic Professorships help Berlin’s universities and publicly funded non-university research institutions to implement pioneering research strategies, build their research profiles, and explore and advance new research areas, as well as nurture their strengths and appeal to outstanding talents. The program is generously supported with private funds from the Damp Foundation. So far eight researchers have been appointed through this program.