Team

Clemens Kroneberg

Principal Investigator of the SOCIALBOND project

Clemens Kroneberg is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne. His research focuses on diversity and boundary making; action theory and social networks; and crime and deviance. Kroneberg is Speaker of the Competence Area “Social and Economic Behavior” at the University of Cologne, a member of the ECONtribute Center of Excellence (Universities of Bonn and Cologne), an external fellow of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research and an elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology.

Personal website: www.kroneberg.eu

Hanno Kruse

Hanno Kruse was a postdoctoral researcher in the SOCIALBOND project (2017-2021) before taking on the position of an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Meanwhile, he has become Professor of Sociology at the University of Bonn, where he leads the Emmy-Noether research group “Sorting Decisions and Peer Processes in Schools (SPINS)”. His research focuses on urban sociology, social networks, and the origins and consequences of segregation. It is driven by the question of how social structures operate behind the backs of those involved.

Personal website: https://hannokruse.com

Heike Krüger

Heike Krüger was a Ph.D. Student in the SOCIALBOND project (2018-2021). She studied Social Sciences (B. Sc.) and subsequently Sociology and Empirical Social Research (M. Sc.) at the University of Cologne. Within the SOCIALBOND project, she worked on a network-analytical perspective on social support and social integration and its relevance for mental well-being in adolescence. In the field of methods, she specializes in quantitative research designs and data analysis, e.g., social network analysis and smartphone-based experience sampling. Heike Krüger is now a postdoc at Aachen University and the University of Cologne.

Kathrin Lämmermann

Kathrin Lämmermann studied Sociology in Mannheim, Groningen, and Cologne. Before joining SOCIALBOND as a Ph.D. student (2018-2019), she worked in the research project “Friendship and Violence in Adolescence.” Her successfully completed dissertation addressed new questions about network segregation and ethnic diversity in the school context. Kathrin Lämmermann also worked at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), and most recently as a PostDoc at the Chair of Sociology I at the University of Cologne.

Sven Lenkewitz

Sven Lenkewitz was a Ph.D. Student in the SOCIALBOND project (2018-2021). He obtained his Master’s degree in “Sociology and Social Research” from the University of Bremen where he worked in the research project “Winners of Globalization? A Study on the Emergence of a Transnational Elite in Europe” (Prof. Dr. Teney) before joining the SOCIALBOND project. His research interests are education and social inequality, social integration of (children) of immigrants and social network analysis. After successfully completing his Ph.D., he worked at the Chair of Sociology I at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology and the DFG project “Juvenile delinquency in urban school and residential contexts” at the University of Cologne. Meanwhile, he works at the Center of Expertise for Analyses, Studies and Evaluations at the DLR Projektträger.

Andrea Wingen (geb. Meckel)

Andrea Wingen was a Ph.D. Student in the SOCIALBOND project (2018-2022). She obtained a Master of Science in Sociology and Social Research from the University of Cologne. Located at the intersection of sociology and social psychology, her dissertation developed and applied new methods to study the nexus between ethnic diversity and trust in the school context. After successfully completing her Ph.D., she worked at the Chair of Sociology I at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology. Meanwhile, she works at the Institute of Climate and Energy Systems (ICE) at the Forschungszentrum Jülich.

Mark Wittek

Mark Wittek was a Ph.D. Student in the SOCIALBOND project (2018-2022). He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology and Social Research from the University of Cologne. His dissertation explored the formation of status orders in three different settings: secondary schools, scientific fields, and the Hollywood film industry. Within the SOCIALBOND project he examined how ethnic categories are constructed and negotiated in students’ social networks. Meanwhile, Mark Wittek has joined the Central European University (CEU) as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Network and Data Science: https://markwittek.wordpress.com/.

Affiliated and visiting researchers

Agnes Tarnowski

Agnes Tarnowski was a doctoral researcher at the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE) at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies since October 2018 (see her profile). She studied Social Sciences (B.Sc.) and Sociology and Empirical Social Research (M. Sc.) at the University of Cologne. In close connection to the SOCIALBOND project, her dissertation explored school principals’ sense making and meaning construction about a diverse student body by applying a nested mixed-method research design. Her successfully completed dissertation advanced our understanding of the obstacles and opportunities for integrating minority students into secondary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Xinwei Xu

While pursuing a PhD in sociology at Cornell University, Xinwei Xu has been a visiting doctoral researcher in the SOCIALBOND project from October 2019 until 2021 on a DAAD scholarship. Her areas of interest include social networks, culture and cognition, and intergroup relations. Based on CILS4EU data, her dissertation research focused on ethnic boundary-making mechanisms among adolescence in the school setting. In particular, she examined how intergroup boundaries form and evolve among adolescent friendship networks, and, in turn, how the network embeddedness of immigrant children shapes their identities and integration outcomes.