Key research areas and partnerships

The disciplines of our faculty reflect the complexity of the social structures it studies. We have clear specialisms both within the institutes and across the faculty.

The Institute of Political Science conducts research in global governance and area studies, comparative political attitude and behavioural research, governance in Germany, the EU, East Asia and Africa, comparative democracy and democratisation studies, elections, political parties, media and parliaments in Germany, peace and conflict studies, political education and transfer.

The Institute of Sociology focuses on comparative society studies and transnationalisation, migration and participation, family and ways of life, social inequality and gender, labour markets, social mobility and social security, work, organisation, technology, advanced methods of empirical social research, societal and social theory.

The Institute of Socio-Economics specialises in measuring inequality, work, social policy and ecology, growth models, digital and technological transformation, political and social consequences of socio-economical problems, public finance and economic policy, socio-economics and socio-economic education.

The Institute of Work, Skills and Training is organised into the following research departments: Employment, Inclusion, Mobility (AIM), Working Time and Work Organisation (AZAO), Education, Development, Social Participation (BEST), Flexibility and Security (FLEX).

The Institute of Development and Peace (INEF) works on the following three research fields within the scope of its current programme, ‘Ordering and Responsibility in the Shadow of Hierarchies’: transnational governance and individual responsibility, developmental partnerships in the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), resistance and political ordering.

Many cross-institute collaborative research projects are conducted in these fields, some of which involve other central research institutions of the University, such as the Institute of East Asian Studies (IN-EAST), the Interdisciplinary Centre for Integration and Migration Research (InZentIM), the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21), the Rhein-Ruhr-Institut für Sozialforschung und Politikberatung e.V. (RISP) and the research profile ‘Transformation of Contemporary Societies’.