Eva Alexandra Jakob has been Junior Professor for Social Entrepreneurship since 1 September 2021.

In 2019, Eva Alexandra Jakob completed her dissertation on the role of social responsibility in existing and emerging companies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf as part of the Manchot Graduate School “Competitiveness of Young Companies”. In 2017, Jakob was invited for a research stay at the Copenhagen Business School at the Center for Corporate Social Responsibility.

From 2014 onwards, the researcher worked in start-up promotion at the University of Paderborn, where she expanded the promotion of social entrepreneurship in teaching and transfer under the umbrella of the Technology Transfer and Start-up Centre (TecUP). As part of this work, she created a programme that, for example, gave students from a wide range of disciplines the opportunity to build up skills in the area of social entrepreneurship and to work together on start-up projects. Among other things, she was responsible for start-up education for students in Ghana as part of a DAAD-funded project.

From 2019, Jakob was responsible for TecUP’s research activities as a postdoc and oversaw the expansion of a regional network for social entrepreneurship in cooperation with the Social Entrepreneurship Netzwerk Deutschland e.V., among other bodies. In her research projects, the junior professor deals with drivers and success factors among budding social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurial teams, as well as the effects of corporate social responsibility.

On 1 September 2021, Prof. Dr. Eva Alexandra Jakob will take up the tenure-track W3 state-funded junior professorship for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Bayreuth. With the junior professorship, she strengthens the Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation with her social perspective. As one of the first universities in Germany, the University of Bayreuth is including the topic of “Social Entrepreneurship” in its range of courses with its specifically created new junior professorship. The University is thus taking an innovative and important step towards promoting the subject of start-ups in a socially relevant direction, and is further expanding its strong range of offerings for those interested in start-ups.

The topic is not entirely new on the Bayreuth campus. With activities such as the Social Entrepreneurship Camp and successful student initiatives such as enactus, which recently took second place in the National Cup, the University has recognised the relevance of the topic early on and implemented corresponding offerings. “I would like to build on this motivation and these activities and make the University of Bayreuth a significant and innovative location for all those who wish to tackle our pressing social problems”, says Jakob. More interactive formats are planned to up-skill those interested in founding, and to promote networking with existing founders, investors, and SMEs. In addition to these new formats, research on social entrepreneurship is also to be more tightly integrated and expanded into University life.

The emphasis on the topics of “entrepreneurship” and “sustainability”, which the University of Bayreuth addresses strategically, but also practically in various areas, excites Prof. Dr. Eva Alexandra Jakob especially. “This gives me the opportunity to explore the area with colleagues from the same discipline and, in addition, to working with renowned interdisciplinary colleagues from other departments and neighbouring institutes. The feedback from the University of Bayreuth and the surrounding area has been overwhelming even before I took up the professorship. I am delighted to be working in such an open and professional environment.”