Julian Jürgenmeyer Joins University of Chicago as Harper-Schmidt Fellow

Julian Jürgenmeyer, a postdoctoral researcher at the MPIfG between 2023 and 2025, is taking up a Harper-Schmidt Fellowship at the University of Chicago this fall. The four-year position as Collegiate Assistant Professor is one of the most coveted postdoctoral positions in the humanities in the US and combines research with teaching in this leading American university’s interdisciplinary undergraduate courses. Jürgenmeyer is a sociologist who received his doctorate from Columbia University in New York in 2023. His research interests are in financial sociology and the sociology of the state. During his time at the MPIfG he worked on “Legitimation Trials,” a project using archival and interview data to investigate how the US Federal Reserve seeks to legitimate its role between political neutrality and economic embeddedness. Working with historical case studies from the 1920s and the 2008 financial crisis, Jürgenmeyer pays particular attention in his study to the hitherto all but ignored practice of banking supervision.