"At the heart of transformation" - Prof. Dr. Klaus Dörre becomes new visiting professor at the Kassel Institute for Sustainability

"I am very grateful to the University of Kassel for giving me the opportunity to research and teach in such an interesting context as the Kassel Institute. I come here with great anticipation," emphasizes Prof. Dr. Klaus Dörre. He finds Kassel and the surrounding districts exciting because they are at the center of the transformation. This applies not least to the automotive industry. Kassel is a traditional industrial location and its prosperity is still largely dependent on industry. "However, even before the drive revolution, it was clear that up to 8,000 jobs could be lost at the VW plant in Baunatal, which unfortunately hardly anyone really wanted to admit." But the automotive industry would not be able to continue as before. He has written a comprehensive study on the transformation of the VW plant in Baunatal, which he intends to expand on. "I will also include apprenticeships in this: I plan to visit the VW plant with the students so that they get an immediate impression, and conversely I would like to try to invite practitioners from the plant to the university."

Northern Hesse is diverse, Kassel has a strong immigrant population, two thirds of jobs in the city are in the service sector, many of them precarious. There is a high proportion of AfD voters, particularly in rural areas. All of this will be another topic of his professorship, because "it touches on the political processing of transformation."

Dörre has a special relationship with the region: he was born in Volkmarsen-Külte in northern Hesse in 1957 and studied political science, sociology, economic and social history and economics at Philipps University Marburg from 1976 to 1982. From 1982 to 1984, he was a research assistant at the Institute for Youth Research and Youth Culture in Frankfurt am Main before becoming a research assistant at the Institute for Political Science at the Philipps University of Marburg. Here he completed his doctorate in 1992 on the subject of "Young female trade unionists. From class individual to active citizen". Between 1991 and 1996 Dörre was a research assistant at the Sociological Research Institute Göttingen (SOFI). In 2002, he completed his habilitation at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Göttingen on the topic "Kampf um Beteiligung. Work, participation and industrial relations in flexible capitalism". In 2004, he was appointed to the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. There he has held the professorship for labor, industrial and economic sociology since 2005. The professorship in Jena ends on March 31.

From 2011 to 2020, Dörre was spokesperson for the DFG Collective Research Group "Post-growth Societies" (together with Stephan Lessenich and Hartmut Rosa), Dörre was a member of numerous scientific societies, research groups and advisory boards as well as a reviewer for various foundations and government agencies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He co-edited the "Berliner Journal für Soziologie" from 2017 to 2023 and "Global Dialogue - Magazine of the International Sociological Association" from 2018 to 2022.

Background:
The Kassel Institute for Sustainability brings together top-level sustainability expertise at the University of Kassel. Three core characteristics characterize the Institute's work: Research at the Kassel Institute combines normative-critical research on the concept of sustainability with solution-oriented research in concrete areas of application. The Kassel Institute conducts holistic research into socio-ecological aspects of transformation. The Kassel Institute realizes the unity of research and teaching and develops new sustainability courses at the University of Kassel.