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Private Players and the Welfare State. German Life Insurance and the Emergence of European Welfare Markets in Old-age Provision since 1945
My current research project takes a closer look at the German welfare state in its transnational and European embeddedness. It investigates the impact of private life insurance companies, transnational lobby organizations and international expert networks on changing concepts and practices of old-age provision in the German Federal Republic since 1945. The project focusses on the agency of private players in order to trace longer currents of state-industry cooperation (and competition) in the welfare sector and to add to recent research on “coordinated capitalism” in central European welfare economies. Based on archival research in company archives, archives of International Organizations, European institutions, and transnational lobby groups, light is shed on the way private insurers and professional insurance associations positioned themselves as socio-political actors, institutional investors and key economic players in the German welfare state and on how they transformed their companies to prosper on European insurance markets.
Biographical Note
Education
2013 Ph.D. in Modern History, European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder
Dissertation: "Showered with Kindness? The NGO CARE and Food aid from America" (Manchester UP 2017)
2008 MA in Modern History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
2008 MA in Philosophy, University Potsdam
Positions
Since 2019 Juniorprofessorin for Historical Research on Europe and European Integration, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
2018 – 2019 Postdoc researcher and scientific coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Master programme "GLOCAL – Global Markets – local opportunities", Institute for Economic and Social History, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
2013 – 2017 Leader of Research Group „Welfare in Europe“, German-French BMBF Verbundprojekt "Saisir l’Europe – Europa als Herausforderung"
More information is available at the following URL: https://www.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/de/bereiche-und-lehrstuehle/juniorprofessur-fuer-historische-europaforschung