Dr. Cornelius Heimstädt

Cornelius Heimstädt is a postdoctoral researcher and principal investigator of the project “The Climatization of Venture Capital: Transformations of Financial Expertise, Valuation, and Performances,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The project is based at the Mercator Endowed Professorship for Sociology, particularly Societal Dynamics of Ecological Transformation (Prof. Dr. Stefan C. Aykut). Cornelius is also an Associate Researcher in the Cluster of Excellence “Climate, Climatic Change and Society” (CLICCS), where he contributes in particular to the work package “Varieties of Climate Agency.” In addition, he is a co-author of the “Klimawendeausblick 2027” and an Associate Researcher at the Agricultural and Food Policy Group at Humboldt University of Berlin.

In his research, Cornelius combines perspectives from economic sociology, environmental sociology, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) to examine how private companies and financial actors engage with questions of sustainability. His particular interest lies in the role of expertise, markets, and valuation practices and instruments in the societal handling of ecological problems.

Empirically, his current research focuses on the rise of “climate venture capital” in Europe. In his DFG project, he investigates how venture capital firms integrate climate concerns into their investment practices, what new forms of financial and climate-related expertise emerge in this process, how methods for assessing “climate impact” are developed, and how the actors involved intervene in climate and environmental policy arenas.

Cornelius received his doctorate in 2022 from the Center for the Sociology of Innovation (CSI) at the engineering school MINES Paris – PSL. His dissertation “Feeding the World with an App: Digital Agriculture, Startups, and the Appeal of Little Devices” is an organizational ethnography of a German agtech startup that examines the digitalization of agriculture in the context of increasing financialization. He holds a B.Sc. in Agriculture and an M.A. in Science and Technology Studies. Together with Tanja Schneider (DTU Copenhagen), he is currently co-editing a special issue of the journal Valuation Studies on the topic “Valuing Sustainability.”