Notes on Contributors
Patrik Aspers
is Chair of Sociology at the University of St. Gallen. He has previously worked at Stockholm University, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and Uppsala University. He has published numerous books and articles on fashion, theory and economic sociology and is currently writing a book on uncertainty reduction and leads a project on marketplaces.
Peter-Paul Bänziger
is a Senior Lecturer (Privatdozent) in the History Department of the University of Basel. His research focuses on the entangled histories of work and consumption, on the history of the body, and on the history of public health.
Martin Bühler
is a Research Manager at the University of Zurich and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Lucerne with a thesis on the emergence of global wheat markets. He was a visiting scholar at lse (2018–2020) and his work focuses on the prerequisites for global markets.
Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick
is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at Birkbeck, University of London. She specializes in European and international industrial relations, trade unions and equality. A second edition of her book, Trade Unions in Western Europe: Hard Times, Hard Choices (with Richard Hyman), was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. Other recent publications include ‘Was ist unser Ziel? Gewerkschaften und ihre politischen Projekte’ {‘What are we here for?’: Trade Unions and their Political Projects’}, in Aulenbacher, B. et al. (eds.) Mosaiklinke Zukunftspfade: Gewerkschaft, Politik, Wissenschaft, (Munster): Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2021, ‘(How) Can International Trade Union Organisations Be Democratic?’ (with Richard Hyman), Transfer 26(3), September 2020, and ‘In Search of Global Labour Markets’, (with Richard Hyman) Journal of Industrial Relations 62(2), April 2020.
Richard Hyman
is Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics and Founding Editor of the European Journal of Industrial Relations. He also founded and coordinates the annual Industrial Relations in Europe Conference
Sven Kesselring
is a Professor in ‘Sustainable Mobilities’ at Nuertingen-Geislingen University (HfWU), Germany. In 2005, he founded the international dfg research network Cosmobilities (
Eleonore Kofman
is Professor of Gender, Migration and Citizenship and co-Director of the Social Policy Research Centre, Middlesex University London. She was co-Editor in Chief of Work, Employment and Society 2018–2021. She is co-Director of the Migration and Displacement stream in the ukri funded Gender, Justice and Security Hub (2019–2024) in which she is project co-investigator for Gendered Dynamics of International Labour Migration. Her research interests are in theoretical and policy aspects of gender and migration, in particular family and skilled labor.
Ursula Mense-Petermann
is a Professor of Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Work at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her recent publications include articles in Global Networks, Journal of Industrial Relations and Critical Perspectives on International Business.
is Professor of Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen and Managing Director of the Centre for Global Cooperation Research. She has written widely on globalization and institutional change, transnational governance, professions and expertise, as well as the comparative analysis of capitalism, gender relations, labor markets and employment systems. She was President of the Society of the Advancement of Socio-Economics (sase) 2020–21 and Chairwomen of the European Group of Organizational Studies (egos) 2006–2008.
Alexandra Scheele
is University Lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her current research focuses on care work and social reproduction, digital capitalism and gender inequalities at work. Important publications analyze the gender pay gap in a comparative perspective, the gendered division of labor and materialist theories. Latest publication: Scheele, Alexandra/Roth, Julia/Winkel, Heidemarie (eds.): Global Contestations of Gender Rights. Bielefeld: Transcript 2022.
Helen Schwenken
is Professor for Migration and Society and Director of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (imis), University of Osnabrück, Germany. Her areas of expertise are gender and migration, labor migration and social movement studies. She is co-editor (with Helge Schwiertz) of Inclusive Solidarity and Citizenship along Migratory Routes in Europe and the Americas (Routledge, 2022).
Karen Shire
is Professor of Comparative Sociology and Japanese Society at the University Duisburg-Essen and a member of the faculty of the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy at the mpi for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. Her research is on the making of cross-border labor markets in Europe and the Asia Pacific.
Marcel van der Linden
is Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, where he served for fourteen years as Research Director. He is the author or editor of some fifty books, including Workers of the World. Essays toward a Global Labor History (Leiden: Brill, 2008; French, German, Portuguese
Thomas Welskopp (†August 19, 2021)
was a Professor of the History of Modern Societies at Bielefeld University, Germany. His research interests were on labor and labor movement history, comparative history of capitalism, political culture and social movements, and theoretical problems in history.
Tobias Werron
is Professor of Sociological Theory and General Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. His research focuses on competition, nationalism, globalization and practices of sociological theorizing.
Anna Zaharieva
is a Professor for Labour Economics at Bielefeld University, Germany. She gained her PhD from the University of Konstanz. Her research focuses on frictional labor markets, job matching, social networks and migration economics. Recent publications include articles in the International Economic Review and the Review of Economic Dynamics.