Carola Westermeier
Sociology

Carola Westermeier (affiliated member)
Carola Westermeier is a Lise Meitner research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. Before joining the MPIfG, she worked at the Institutes for Sociology at the Technical University Darmstadt and JLU Giessen. She co-leads a project on “Financial Infrastructures and Geoeconomic Security” and previously led a research project on “Money as Data.” She was also a Visiting Professor of International Relations and International Political Economy at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Westermeier’s research lies at the intersection of economic sociology, international political economy, and (critical) security studies. She has explored the interplay between finance and security in post-crisis financial governance, as well as the role of technologies in financial security and the data economy. She has also published on the importance of existing and evolving financial technologies in infrastructural geopolitics.
Research fields:
- International political economy and sociology of international relations
- Critical security studies and science and technology studies
- The data economy and forms of data surveillance