DGS Dissertation Award for Sören Altstaedt and Franziska Wiest
Sören Altstaedt and Franziska Wiest, both researchers at the MPIfG, received the Dissertation Award of the German Sociological Association (DGS), which recognizes outstanding doctoral dissertations in sociology. The prizes, each worth 1,000 euros, were conferred during the DGS General Assembly on September 30, 2026.
Altstaedt was honored for his dissertation, “Ecologizing Tomorrow: The Clash of Future-Cultures in the 1970s ‘Limits to Growth’ Debates,” with which he earned his PhD from the University of Hamburg in June 2025. Based on archival research at MIT, the dissertation reconstructs the connection between the emergence of new scientific modeling methods and ecological visions of the future in the 20th century. The empirical study focuses on the development of systems science methods at MIT. In 1972, these methods were used for the first time in the Club of Rome report “The Limits to Growth” to depict the planet’s future in a scientific model and are thus considered precursors to modern climate models. Using the global debates surrounding the report as an example, Altstaedt shows how visions of the future in modern societies are contested by “future cultures.” By this, he means coalitions of diverse social actors, each of which develops specific visions of the future and claims the authority to interpret society. In 2024, Altstaedt joined the MPIfG as a postdoctoral researcher in the Economic Sociology Research Area, focusing, among other things, on power structures in Germany’s energy transition. Since October 2026, he has been a senior researcher at the MPIfG, working on a project examining the negotiation of the future within democratic institutions.
Wiest received the award for her dissertation “Contested Wealth: Patrimonial Relations in Super-Rich Families,” which she defended at the University of Cologne in April 2026. Based on 33 interviews with members of nine ultra-wealthy families in Germany, the dissertation explores how wealth is passed down, organized, and legitimized across generations. It focuses on intra-family conflicts, which Wiest uses to shed light on the transformation of norms, values, and power relations within these families. Drawing on Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism, she demonstrates that notions of paternal authority and family tradition continue to exert influence while simultaneously undergoing change: as ideals of equality and care gain prominence, the family comes more strongly to the fore as a collective actor. The dissertation was supervised by Isabell Stamm (TU Berlin). Wiest was a doctoral researcher at the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE), the MPIfG’s graduate school, and is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Economic Sociology Research Area.
