Prof. Nicole Mayer-Ahuja

Nicole Mayer-Ahuja is professor of sociology (with a focus on work, company, and economy) at University of Göttingen as well as director of the Sociological Research Institute (SOFI). Both in her research and in many SOFI-projects, transnational perspectives on labour have gained considerable importance during the last years. On the one hand, the classical case-studies of labour sociology are extended to work constellations beyond Germany and even beyond Europe. This applies to studies on Indo-German IT-work between transnational corporate strategy and localized labour regulation, for instance. On the other hand, research on work and employment in Germany is increasingly analysed from a transnational perspective, through productive discussions and cooperations in the emerging field of Global Labour History and Global (Labour) Sociology. Thus precarious employment among migrants in Germany, for example, can be analysed with a view to worldwide tendencies of informalization. Mayer-Ahuja is part of the Labour Module of the M.S Merian International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP), and functions as a member of the Advisory Board for the International Research Center „Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History“ (Humboldt University, Berlin).  In June 2017, SOFI and VW-Foundation hold the Herrenhausen Symposium “Workers of the World. Global Perspectives on Labour from the 1950s to the Present”.