John F. Kennedy Institute, Sociology Department, Project: "Reinsuring Catastrophe: The Business and Politics of Reinsurers in Times of Climate Change and Financialization"
Reinsurers insure direct insurers against excess losses by diversifying risks across the globe and thus spreading direct non-life and life insurance. Recently, this economic background function has come to the fore of media attention as the rise in reinsurance premiums and even retreat from markets too exposed to climate change has made entire areas and branches uninsurable. Due to their global focus on excess losses, reinsurers have been in a unique position to document and be subjected to climate catastrophes, while they themselves have become increasingly intertwined with capital markets through catastrophe bonds and financial investments. This project aims to uncover the often-hidden financial giants in the reinsurance sector to understand how they reacted to climate change and ongoing processes of financialization.

Job description:
- Assist the university instructor of the Dept. of Sociology in teaching and research, especially in researching and obtaining literature for research purposes, data collection, maintenance and analysis.
- The student will be expected to contribute in locating, collecting, harmonizing, and systematizing historical data from primary sources of various countries and firms using statistical software, as well as assist in making analyses.

Desirable:
- Familiarity with working with quantitative data and ideally historical data sources
- Knowledge of descriptive statistics and statistical software (e. g. R, stata, Python)
- Interest in economic sociology and political economy in general and the sociology of insurance and climate change in particular
- German skills (at least B1), English (C1); knowledge (reading ability) of other European languages and prior experience with archival work is an advantage
- BA-/MA- students North American Studies (with an interest in sociology), BA-/MA- students in sociology or related social sciences (esp. economics, history).
- Please send motivation letter, CV, transcripts, and writing sample (term paper, essay or thesis)