Research

Embedded within the Göttingen Research Campus – where myriad cooperative relationships with university and non-university institutes and centres merge – the Faculty of Social Sciences divides its research foci into three interlinked subjects “Globalisation and institutional change”, “Cultural and religious diversity and social integration” and “Educational research”.
Alongside these areas of emphasis, the field of gender studies in the social sciences represents a cross-sectoral topic that had been managed under the auspices of the Faculty for a quite while. In April 2011, the establishment of a chair for Gender Studies in Sociology strengthened this departmental structure even more.
The research environment at the Göttingen Research Campus gives the Faculty excellent conditions in which to pursue its chosen objectives. Among others, the campus is home to the Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities (GCDH), founded in 2011, the Centre for Modern East Asian Studies (CeMEAS), the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) and the Centre for Empirical Teaching and School Research (ZeUS). Additionally, the Faculty of Social Sciences maintains strong partnerships with non-university and affiliate institutes, namely the Sociological Research Institute (SOFI) and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, which was founded 2008 and whose directors are honorary professors at the Faculty. Cooperation projects are also ongoing with the not-for-profit association “Institut für Regionalforschung e.V.”, a region-based social sciences research institute specialised in qualitative application-orientated social research.
To round off and reinforce its portfolio, the Faculty offers research-oriented B.A., M.A. and doctoral degrees. With the new founding of the Institute for Democracy Studies in 2010, and the affiliated professorship for Party Systems and Political Culture Research, an outstanding breeding ground was created for further collaborative research projects where the relationship between academia and the public is examined by applying interdisciplinary and political science methodologies.
Links to the research areas
Links to the institutes