Katharina is a PhD candidate in the programme group Institutions, Inequalities and Life courses (IIL) of the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. She is affiliated with the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) and the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS). Her PhD research focuses on the impact of organizational contexts on discrimination in the labor market (Supervision: dr. Bram Lancee, dr. Valentina Di Stasio).

Katharina studied at the University of Cologne, the University of Bradford, Utrecht University as well as the University of Amsterdam. She obtained a Bachelor in Social Sciences from the University of Cologne and a Research Master’s degree in Sociology and Social Research from Utrecht University.

Katharina's PhD project is titled "Bringing the context back in: How national institutions and organizations shape ethnic discrimination in the labour market". Existing research unequivocally shows that employers discriminate against ethnic minorities on the labour market. Whereas researchers have focused on characteristics of job seekers, such as their skills, motivation, and work experience, in explaining discrimination in hiring and promotion decisions, this project aims to shed more light on how discrimination comes about in the workplace. As discrimination is a socially constructed process that is embedded in a larger institutional environment, this project considers organizations as opportunity structures which can nurture or prevent discrimination. Organizational processes are studied by making use of data from the GEMM study, a cross-national correspondence study. Next to that an extensive data collection and survey experiment among employers is carried out by Katharina and her colleagues. 

Supervisors: dr. bram Lancee, dr. Valentina Di Stasio

Katharina was involved in teaching the courses Migration and Citizenship (BA Sociology) and Social Research Methodology (BA Sociology).