Dr. Katharina Dittrich

Principal Investigator

Katharina Dittrich is Associate Professor of Organization Studies in the Organization and Work (OW) Group at Warwick Business School. Her research interests include climate change, organizational change, organizational routines/routine dynamics and strategy, with an emphasis on practice-theoretical approaches and qualitative research methods. Her work has been published in Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Theory and Research in the Sociology of Organizations.

Katharina is the Principal Investigator of the research project and focuses on coordinating and managing the research team, and planning the strategic direction of the research together with other team members. She is also involved in data collection and analysis at all partner organizations. In addition, Katharina is a member of the Financial Net-Zero Expert Advisory Group (EAG) at the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi).

Dr. Julius Kob

Research Fellow

Julius Kob joined Warwick Business School and the project as Postdoctoral Research Fellow when it launched in October 2020. He is responsible for field research, managing relationships with partner organisations, providing stakeholder feedback, analysis, and co-developing the project overall. As an economic sociologist, and science and technology studies scholar, he is interested in risk modelling and financial risk management around climate change and disasters in capital and (re)insurance markets. Applying a social studies of finance perspective to research on the Anthropocene, he is particularly interested in the intersections of epistemology and ontology of environmental change.

Julius received his PhD in sociology from the University of Edinburgh for research on catastrophe modelling in (re)insurance and capital markets and the role of finance in the Anthropocene. He holds an MSc in economic sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in sociology and psychology from Hamburg University.

He has been a visiting researcher at the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at The New School, and at the Center on Organizational Innovation at Columbia University.

Dr. Matthias Täger

Research Fellow

Matthias Täger joined Warwick Business School in August 2022. In his role as Research Fellow, he collects and analyses data, provides feedback to partner organisations, and contributes to the overall development of the project. His primary focus within the project lies in the development and use of so-called Implied Temperature Rise (ITR) metrics. Working on the intersection of economic sociology, science and technology studies, and climate-related governance, Matthias’ research seeks to understand how finance governs its relationship with the natural environment through knowledge and technologies.

Matthias completed his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2022. His PhD research traced the construction of climate risk through the TCFD and the NGFS Climate Scenarios. Prior to his PhD, Matthias was a Fulbright student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He holds a MA in International Relations from the University of Bremen and the Jacobs University Bremen and a BA in Political Science and History from the LMU Munich.

Mohamed Qaddoura

Doctoral Researcher

Mohamed Bassam Ahmad Qaddoura is a PhD researcher in the Organisation and Work department at Warwick Business School (WBS), with both a prior full-time MBA and MSc in Marketing and Strategy from WBS.

Before joining academia, Mohamed worked for a decade in the corporate sector, mainly in healthcare and financial services, including a bank, as a Project Manager and Senior Consultant, respectively. He was responsible for initiating, managing and executing change management, and portfolio and programme management solutions to strategically plan and deliver projects toward driving societal impact and organisational progress. In 2020, as a PhD Scholarship recipient, he was awarded the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to work with Dr Dittrich and the team on the research project. His main theoretical area of interest is in risk management, specifically riskwork with a focus on the novel subtypes of risk.

His ongoing doctoral project consists of an ethnographic study in riskwork with climate change as the focal example of novel risk.

Joseph Conrad

Research Assistant

Joseph Conrad is a PhD candidate in Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh, and a Research Assistant at Warwick Business School. In his PhD research, he investigates corporations’ responsibilities as collective moral agents and political actors in the context of climate change. His main academic interest is at the intersection of climate justice, normative business ethics, collective agency, and responsibility. Joseph has a diverse educational background in environmental studies, philosophy, and mathematics.

Joseph works as a Research Assistant in the research project since June 2022. His main responsibilities include the provision of background research and analysis. For example, he has undertaken an analysis of different use cases of the emerging Implied Temperature Rise (ITR) metric. Joseph has also analyzed different industry-led net-zero alliances under the umbrella of the UN Race to Zero campaign.

Cecilia Paulsson

Research Assistant

Cecilia joined Warwick Business School and the project in September 2022. She has worked as a research assistant since July 2021, and prior to joining WBS she provided support on a healthcare project at UCL/Università Bocconi investigating the implementation of artificial intelligence in oncology and ophthalmology, and at Imperial College London on a project studying the revival of old technologies. Between 2016 and 2021 she co-ran a programme for small businesses at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, where she was responsible for the operational side of the programme. She is a trained journalist, and before she transitioned into higher education her background was predominantly in the media and broadcast television industry. Cecilia holds a BA in journalism and print media from the University of East London, and she studied physics and mathematics at the Open University.

Cecilia’s responsibilities on the project includes building and maintaining the project website, communications, data management, and administrative tasks.