Chair of Macrosociology

The Team of the Chair of Macrosociology at the University of Mannheim focusses in its research on the welfare state, social policy, life courses and political attitudes as well as on old-age provision and nursing care systems 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 research projects MZES and contributes besides other members of the team to teaching at under- and graduate level in sociology.

Ongoing projects 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). Since 2019, the young researchers’ group “Integration of migrants and attitudes towards the welfare state (IMES)” is working in cooperation with the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW).

The teaching of the Chair team covers teaching in the module “European Societies”, largely in German, for the BA Soziologie (Sociology) and seminars in the English taught MA studies of Sociology.