Jonas is a PhD researcher in Sociology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He holds a BA in History and Economic and Social History from the University of Göttingen (Germany), and an MSc in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on aleatoric governance in the city-state of Basel between 1650 and 1798. He explores how the use of lotteries in election systems affected urban elite formation. His other fields of interest include: German business history, consumer history, and the history of the German light industry.