Chair of Macrosociology

Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Ebbinghaus, the Team of the Chair of Macrosociology at the University of Mannheim focusses in its research and teaching on reforms of the welfare state and new developments of social policy as well as on social inequalities  chances in an international comparative perspective.

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Ebbinghaus leads the Chair since January 2022, he has previously been head of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford.  PD Dr. Thomas Bahle is Principal Investigator of several research projects located at the MZES and contributes besides other members of the team to teaching at under- and graduate level in sociology. In August 2025, Andrew Zola joined the team as postdoc after having completed his PhD studies at the Science Po, Paris. The doctoral candidates Daria Frost (since Juli 2024), Miriam Gohl (seit Juli 2024) and Stephanie Buchholz (since Juli 2025) are acadamic staff members at the chair.

In August 2023, Prof. Dr. Ilze Plavgo has been nominated as junior professor for Sociology of the Welfare State at the School of Social Sciences and has left Mannheim to join the ESPOL at the Catholic University of Lille.

After many years as junior professor and interim professor at the chair, Prof. Dr. Katja Möhring accepted an offer of the University of Bamberg in February 2023 to hold a professorship of Sociology. Still being associated to the chair, Prof. Möhring has led together with Dr. Katrin Sommerfeld (ZEW) and Dr. Elias Naumann (GESIS) the young researchers' group “Integration of Migrants and Attitudes Towards the Welfare State” in cooperation with the ZEW.

Completed projects of the chair are “Welfare state reform support from below: linking individual attitudes and organized interests in Europe” at the Research Centre “Political Economy of Reforms” as well as “Women’s Late Careers in Europe and the USA—Employment Chances and Transitions Between Care-Giving and Retirement”, “Employment in the Early Phase of the Corona Crisis in Germany” and “Comparing the Coordination of Elderly Care Services in European Welfare States: How Organizational Actors Respond to Marketization Policies” at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES).

The teaching of the Chair team covers teaching in the advanced BA-module “European Societies”, largely in German, and introductory seminars (Proseminare) for the BA Soziologie (Sociology) and seminars in the English taught MA studies of Sociology. Doctoral candidates are usually integrated into the Graduate School at the University of Mannheim (GESS/CDSS).