Knut Petzold is a sociologist and a professor of methods of empirical social research at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Before joining the HSZG in 2020, he was affiliated at the Sociology Section of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (2017-2020), at the Department of Sociology of the CU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (2013-2017), and at the School of Economic Disciplines of the University of Siegen (2011-2013). He served as interim professor in sociology of education at the Leibniz University Hannover (2018-2019) and in methods of empirical social research at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (2016-2017). He holds a doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Leipzig (2011) and received a postdoctoral graduation (habilitation) in sociology from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (2019).
His expertise lies in the areas of social stratification and social inequality, and theory-driven research designs with a specific focus on contemporary methods of causal inference. His current research interests cover higher education and work, mobility and migration, ethnic discrimination, social norms, and the validity of experimental designs.
He is Board Member of RN21 - Quantitative Methods of the European Sociological Association (ESA) and also serves as coordinator of the Research Stream - Sociology of Spatial Mobilities. Furthermore, he is speaker of the Section Model-Building and Simulation (ModSim) of the German Sociological Association (DGS) and initiated a working group on Empirical Research Methods in the Section Urban Sociology.
In 2023/24, Knut Petzold is a visiting professor at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography of the Paris Lodron University Salzburg PLUS.
From 2024-2026, he is exempted as a research professor of the HZSG.