Prof. Dr. Sigrid Quack
Professor for Sociology with focus on Comparative Sociology
Currently: Managing Director, Centre for Global Cooperation Research
Acting Professor: Vert. Prof. Dr. Jenny Preunkert
Sigrid Quack, a sociologist with an interdisciplinary orientation, is broadly interested in the preconditions, actors and effects of the development of transnational institutions. Her research focuses on the constitution of epistemic and governance authority in cases of institution building characterized by the participation of private and civil society actors. She also studies the interplay of intended and emergent processes of institutionalization. Recent projects investigate the social and organizational practices that actors use to cope with regulatory uncertainties arising from the polycentric nature of transnational governance. Examples are projects on the organization of creative processes in the music and pharmaceutical industries in relation to intellectual property regulation; patterns of occupational mobility between NGOs in transnational labor markets; and recursive processes between rule-setting and the implementation of transnational standards and legal norms.
Curriculum Vitae
Since October 2013, I have been Professor of Sociology, with a focus on Comparative and Transnational Sociology, at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Since 2017, I am the Managing Director of the KHK/Centre for Global Cooperation Research. At the same time, I remain affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne as an Associate Researcher and Leader of the Research Group Institution Building across Borders. Before joining the University of Duisburg-Essen, I taught as Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cologne and the Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (SPCE-IMPRS). From 1993 to 2007 I held positions as researcher and project leader at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung where I conducted international comparative studies on labour markets, employment, organization and professions, and taught at the Free Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and Technischen Universität Berlin. I studied sociology at the Université Paris-Vincennes and the Freie Universität Berlin, obtaining my doctorate in 1992 and my habilitation in 2007 from the latter.
During stays abroad I have been researching and teaching at the Ecole Normal Supérieure de Cachan (France), the University of Uppsala (Sweden) and the University of Cambridge (UK). As German member of the expert network Gender Equality and Employment of the European Commission from 1989 to 1995, I prepared expert opinions on working time, occupational segregation, and wage disparities. From 2006 to 2008, I was Chair of the European Group of Organizational Studies (EGOS). Currently I am a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Avancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), a coordinator of the Research Network on Professionals and Professions in a Globalizing World of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).
I am a member of the editorial boards of Organization Studies, Journal of Professions and Organizations, Review of International Political Economy (RIPE), and I review regularly for Regulation & Governance among other international journals.