Steffen studied sociology and cultural and social anthropology at the University of Münster and social research at the University of Cologne. He also worked as an assistant for the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster, the German Institute for Adult Education, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. Since september 2025, he has been a research assistant at the Department of Organization, Work, and the Economy at the Technical University of Berlin, where he is conducting research in the subproject “Embracing Capital” of the Collaborative Research Center Structural Change of Property.
In his master's thesis, he examined gender-based power inequalities between entrepreneurs in terms of company shareholdings and management positions in newly founded companies. In the “Embracing Capital” project, he is researching the genealogical connections between the various legal forms of corporate law in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1948. In addition, he examines the normative dimension of corporations. To this end, he analyzes the negotiation of corporations in newspapers and parliamentary debates. He is particularly interested in how the legitimacy of the distribution of profits and losses, as well as rights and obligations, is defined in the design of legal forms.
Research Interest:
- Economic sociology
- Ownership of companies
- Social theory
