Professor Anja-Kristin Abendroth
Professor of Social Structure Analysis
Universität Bielefeld, Faculty of Sociology
Professional career and research topics
Anja-Kristin Abendroth’s academic background includes a Master (Diploma) of Science in Sociology, obtained between 2003 and 2008, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Health Communication, completed between 2005 and 2007, at the University of Bielefeld. In January 2013, she successfully completed her PhD, which focused on the employment of women in Europe and the significance of societal, workplace, and family conditions. This research was conducted at Utrecht University’s Institute for Social-Economic Research (ICS), the Netherlands.
Since 2011, in addition to her doctoral position at Utrecht University, she has been employed at Bielefeld University as a research associate in the Collaborative Research Centre ‘From Heterogeneities to Inequalities’. Since 2013, she has been employed at Bielefeld University’s Faculty of Sociology. From 2013 to 2018, she held a post-doc position (Akademische Rätin), subsequently assuming the role of junior professor for “Technical and Social Change” within the ‘Social Structure and Social Inequality’ department. Since December 2023, she has been Professor of Social Structure Analysis.
In 2025, Anja-Kristin Abendroth was appointed an IAB Research Fellow.
Her research focuses on labour market inequalities, organizational inequality regimes, the digitalisation of the world of work, and family sociology.
Her research has been funded through various third-party funding programs. These include, among others, the projects “Flexibility in Digitalized Working Worlds: Use and implications of telework and digital work communication” (2021 to 2023) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the project “The Choice between Time or Money: New Flexibility for Better Compatibility of Work and Private Life?” (2021 to 2027) which is being conducted in cooperation with the IAB and funded by the by the Hans-Böckler Foundation.
Her work has been published in leading journals such as the American Sociological Review, the European Sociological Review, New Technology, Work and Employment, and Work, Employment and Society.