Susanne Wessendorf

Susanne Wessendorf serves as an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow in Ethnicity, Race and Equity at the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, where her work interrogates societal diversification through interdisciplinary social science lenses.

Her research centers on how categories like ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and socio-economic status dynamically shape social cohesion in migration-affected societies. She advocates for an emic approach to boundary-making analysis—drawing on theorists like Fredrik Barth and Andreas Wimmer—to uncover context-specific differentiators that drive inclusion/exclusion processes, challenging overreliance on static ethnic frameworks in diversification scholarship.