Inspiring and Engaged

On 20 June 2026, our irreplaceable colleague Prof. Dr. Katja Rost died at the age of 50. We are deeply saddened by this devastating loss. We all associate Katja Rost with her incredible energy, drive and courage; she always happily took part in public debate and was eager to explain social phenomena, share scholarly findings and counter prejudice. From 2017 to 2020, for example, she was a widely read guest columnist for the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper.

Rost championed open-ended research, even when the empirical results ran counter to cherished academic or political dogmas. She used her inaugural lecture – Refutation Not Welcome! On the One-Sided Publication of Empirical Findings and Flawed Scientific Knowledge  – to take aim at the widespread habit of defending dogmatic doctrines. In doing so, she exemplified the Enlightenment spirit of science and came out against clinging to academic or political principles, regardless of political orientation.

In her scholarly and public contributions, Rost never shied away from tackling current events and hot-button issues, whether it was executive pay, social media “shitstorms”, gender-based salaries at universities or the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility. She also published and forcefully defended findings that did not match the prevailing view – for instance, that bonuses do little to boost the performance of senior staff, that the salaries of male and female professors at the University of Zurich barely differ, or that corporate social engagement does not translate into higher profits.     

Rost threw herself enthusiastically into many roles. She led a large team and directed innovative projects with third-party funding. In recent years, she headed Human Reproduction Reloaded, an interdisciplinary University Research Priority Program at the interface of social science, ethics and medicine. Opening up new fields of research was a matter close to her heart.  Her original discipline was economic and organizational sociology, and she addressed a broad spectrum of research questions ranging from digital sociology to social networks to social diversity. Rost played a significant role in gender research and regularly advised university and public bodies. From 2019 to 2024 she was president of the University of Zurich’s Gender Equality Commission.

As an instructor, Rost filled large lecture halls and inspired her students. She was always ready to support and advance innovative work. As a loving mother, she did not hesitate to bring her son along to meetings or let him sit in on her lectures whenever school holidays clashed with her duties. This past year, as department head, she also devoted herself to the Department of Sociology’s strategic development. In everything she did, Katja Rost stood out for her incredible energy and drive to take action, inspiring those around her. At the same time, she always found it important to create good working conditions and secure resources for her teams, for the members of the Department of Sociology and for staff at her other workplaces. Rost only requested a small office for herself: she was always aware that she held a privileged position and remained modest.

Katja Rost served as a full professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Zurich since 2012. She studied sociology at the University of Leipzig, earned her doctorate in economics at TU Berlin and completed her habilitation in the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics at the University of Zurich. Before that, she had worked as an assistant professor of organizational sociology at the University of Mannheim and as a professor of management at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Rost was also an active member of the academic community beyond her positions at UZH: she was the editor of several distinguished journals, a member of the advisory boards of numerous journals and Vice President of the University Council of the University of Lucerne.

She faced her long illness with unfailing dignity. Right until the end, she made certain that her responsibilities were fulfilled and that her staff could look to the future with confidence and security. It is with great admiration that we bid her farewell. The University of Zurich, her colleagues, her team, her staff and her students will remember Katja Rost with profound gratitude.