Department of Sociology

The department was founded around 60 years ago by Ralf Dahrendorf and has since developed into a modern centre of sociological teaching and research with an empirical orientation. Six professorships are dedicated to researching current social issues: Macrosociology, Methods and Social Structure, Sociology of Gender, Migration and Diversity, Microsociology and Qualitative Methods.

Training is provided in the degree programmes BA Sociology, MA Sociology with a focus on Empirical Social Research, MA Sociology: Diversity and Society and MA Public Policy and Social Change. Research and teaching at the department cover a broad thematic and methodological spectrum, which is also complemented by workshops. Our main research areas are:

[Translate to Englisch:] Diversität, Migration und Lebensverlauf

Diversity, Migration, Life course

Here we look at problematisations of diversity and migration as well as socio-structural factors of different educational trajectories and interactions of individual life trajectories with institutional structures and fields of action.

[Translate to Englisch:] Gender Körper Wissen

Gender, Body, Knowledge

In this thematic complex, we examine the extent to which phenomena such as gender, technology, media, the body and the social practices and knowledge systems associated with them are "natural" or the results of cultural conditioning and social values.

[Translate to Englisch:] Qualitative und Quantitative Methoden

Qualitative and quantitative Methods

A broad spectrum of methods and methodologies of empirical social research are the basis of our teaching. In the MA programmes, these are deepened in three-semester teaching research projects.

[Translate to Englisch:] Soziale Ungleichheit und Institutionen

Social Inequality and Institutions

Here we deal with the conditions under which social inequality arises and its consequences for individuals and society. The focus is particularly on institutional framework conditions.