Catalina Enrica Renč studied at Tianjin Foreign Studies University (天津外国语大学) and Friedrich Schiller University Jena. From 2017 to 2018, she completed a certificate program in "Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages" in Tianjin, China. At Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, she earned her Bachelor's degree in Sociology and Economics from 2018 to 2022, and her Master's degree in Sociology from 2022 to 2025. Her Master's thesis addresses property relations in digital physical infrastructure (mobile communication towers, data centers/clouds, and undersea cables).
From April 2022 to March 2024, she worked as a student and research assistant in the Collaborative Research Center "Structural Change of Property," within the research project JRT 2 "Clash or Convergence of Capitalisms." From March to December 2024, she also contributed to the research project "Who owns the critical digital physical infrastructure? An analysis of transnational ownership, conflicts over public interests and state regulation" at AK Vienna. Since April 2025, she has been a research associate in Project B08 " Conflicts over Property and State Responses to the Internationalization of Chinese Companies in the US and the EU". In this context, she primarily investigates Chinese reactions on the level of global financial relations and the resulting property conflicts. Her particular interest lies in the dynamic developments in the fields of Green Finance and FinTech. She analyzes how China strategically utilizes these financial technologies, how this contributes to the transformation of global financial practices, and how global ownership relations and power dynamics are influenced by these developments. Since April of the same year, she has also been a research associate at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, where she offers courses on digital capitalism and financial market capitalism, among other topics.
