After a one-and-a-half-year preparation phase, the Research Institute for Social Cohesion began its work. The institute is receiving 40 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The University of Bremen is a member.
Together with the universities in Frankfurt and Leipzig, the University of Bremen is coordinating the scientific work of the eleven participating university and research institutes. The senator for science and ports, Dr. Claudia Schilling, is extremely happy about this: “Bremen’s science policy recognized the need for social political research at an early stage. That is how Bremen has been able to develop into a great location in the field of research into social inequality and social policy in the past three decades. I am even more pleased that the university can contribute its immense specialist competences from numerous research and transfer projects to this national institute that is of such important to social cohesion.”
Professor Bernd Scholz-Reiter, president of the University of Bremen, states: “Bremen’s social sciences sector is once more demonstrating its strengths in interdisciplinary collaborative research with the the University of Bremen|s coordination of the Research Institute for Social Cohesion. I am also happy that the strategic development of university high-profile areas is showing its effect.”
Social Inequality and Political Conflicts
The Research Institute for Social Cohesion’s topics span from new social conflicts, to the drifting apart of towns and countryside, populism, and increasing anti-Semitism. At the University of Bremen, an interdisciplinary team will investigate issues of social cohesion with a focus on social inequality and political conflicts and will try to initiate dialogue with Bremen’s society within transfer projects. The topical focus of Bremen’s contribution will be the relationship between social milieus and especially the role of the middle classes.
In the Bremen sector of the Research Institute for Social Cohesion, the Center of Labor and Politics (zap), the Institute for Labor and Economy (iaw), the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research (IfEK), and the Centre for Media, Communication, and Information research (ZeMKI) work together.
Main Data Center at the University of Bremen
Additionally, the Research Institute for Social Cohesion’s main data center will be located at the University of Bremen. The center will coordinate a longitudinal analysis of social cohesion in Germany. “With the creation of the Research Institute for Social Cohesion’s own data infrastructure, matters of social cohesion in Germany, such as the drifting apart of social milieus, will be able to be analyzed in an expedient and systematically empirical manner,” explains the spokesperson of the sub-institute in Bremen, professor of sociology Olaf Groh-Samberg. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research will initially fund the Research Institute for Social Cohesion for four years.
Contact:
Prof. Olaf Groh-Samberg
SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy
Phone: +49 (0)421 218-66440
