Team

Elena Beregow studied sociology in Göttingen, Hamburg, and Copenhagen and completed her PhD at the University of Hamburg with a dissertation on thermal figures in social theory, focusing on fermentation as both a sociological concept and a material practice. From 2020 to 2025 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. Her research is situated at the intersection of sociological theory and cultural sociology, with a particular interest in the sociology of the senses, metaphors, microbes, and the social dimensions of temperature. She also explores sociological writing and theorising, as well as pop culture, affects, and atmospheres.

Christopher Kirschner is a doctoral researcher in the research group 'Sweat - Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming' as of May 2025. He studied sociology at the University of Hamburg from 2016 to 2024. In his Master's thesis, he conducted an (auto-)ethnographic study on practical mediation and incorporation processes as well as the development of a practical sense of the game in Rugby Union. His current research focuses on the ethnographic study of physical and practical senses and the social conditions of heat and sweat perception in sport and wellness cultures.

Tamara Mercante Thierauf is a doctoral researcher in the research group ‘Sweat – Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming’ as of August 2025. She holds a Bachelor's degree in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and a Master's degree in Science and Technology Studies from Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research explores sweating with a focus on the entanglements of bodies, data infrastructures, and global warming. She is particularly interested in sweat-sensing technologies, examining both their materiality and the infrastructures they rely on, as well as how practices of datafying sweat shape experiences of selfhood, health, and emotional legibility.