Jens has been Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung) since 2005 and Professor of Sociology at the University of Cologne. He has previously taught in Göttingen, New York, Princeton, Paris, and at Harvard University. He was awarded the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Prize in 2005 and the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in 2018. Jens received the Karl Polanyi Prize from the German Sociological Association for his book Imagined Futures (german: Imaginierte Zukunft. Fiktionale Erwartungen und kapitalistische Dynamik).

At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Jens will be a visitor in the Futures of Capitalism program in the spring term of 2025.