Alexandra Seehaus

Profile

I am a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC) with a background in the sociology of work and economic sociology. My research targets class and labour relations in financial capitalism and explores issues related to precarisation and technological change in the world of work. In particular, I’m interested in the experiences and perceptions of inequality in the workplace and wider society.

I joined LUBS as a doctoral candidate in October 2019, funded by the Work and Employment Relations Department. My doctoral research investigated how platform workers in the food delivery sector in Germany and the UK make sense of inequality in the workplace and everyday life. It showed how far food couriers think about society in terms of class and what collective identities they are forming. My current research expands on these questions and investigates perceptions of class conflict among platform workers across various countries. 

Before starting the PhD, I was a research assistant in the PREWORK project at the Free University of Berlin, which examined the social consciousness, life strategies, and civic activism of young precarious workers in Poland and Germany (https://www.prework.uni.wroc.pl/prework.eu/en.html). Participating in research on the life stories of young workers in the UK and Greece, I continue to work from a comparative perspective on the normalization of precarity and class consciousness among young workers.

I use mainly comparative, qualitative research methods to gain an in-depth understanding of phenomena of interest, but I am also interested in mixed-method research that draws a wider picture of the changing world of work.

Responsibilities

• Post-Doctoral Fellow

Research interests

Plattform economy and precarious work 

Class relations in modern capitalist societies

Future of Work

Qualifications

• PhD candidate in Economics and Business, Leeds University Business School
• MA Economic and Financial Sociology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
• BA Social Science, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg

Professional memberships

• British Sociological Association
• German Sociological Association
• The British Universities Industrial Relations Association

Student education

I was the seminar leader for various undergraduate modules including Business and Society and Organisational Theory. Currently, I focus on research work only.