Working Groups

The department consists of four working groups with differing core areas in teaching and research.

Working group "Work, Welfare State, and Gender"

Over the past decades, the content, structure, and the role of paid work have undergone substantial changes, marked not only by tertiarisation, rising educational levels, increasing employment of mothers with young children,and more flexible forms of living, but also by globalization, free movement of workers and services, flexibilization of labour markets, and growing migration. While standard work arrangements and the male breadwinner household  model are on the decline, non-standard work and the pluralization of family forms  are on the rise. Read more ...
Head: Prof. Dr. Karin Gottschall


Working group "Social Policy and the Life Course"

The working group investigates social policy regulations with regard to changing employment careers and life courses in Germany and in international comparison. Our research focuses on how social policies regulate atypical employment and discontinuous employment careers, on how individuals, on the level of their daily lifestyle, deal with uncertainties in their social protection, and on normative concepts of the life course inherent in social policies. Read more ...
Leitung: Prof. Dr. Simone Scherger


Working group "Social, Cultural and Economic Inequalities"

Our research group investigates social inequalities from a multidimensional and longitudinal perspective. In particular, we focus on distinct dimensions and processes of social inequality as well as class and milieu-specific dynamics of inequality on the societal level. Read more ...
Head: Prof. Dr. Olaf Groh-Samberg

 

Working group "Comparative Study of Societies"

Our working group studies the current transformation of social inequality, the welfare state and the economy both from a national and cross-national comparative perspective. Our focus is on the justice orientations and the potentials for solidarity and conflict that accompany these developments in modern welfare societies.  Read more ...
Head: Prof. Dr. Patrick Sachweh