Chair of Macrosociology

The Team of the Chair of Macrosociology at the University of Mannheim focusses in its research on reforms of the welfare state and of social policy as well as on soial inequalities and mobility 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 research projects MZES and contributes besides other members of the team to teaching at under- and graduate level in sociology. 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.

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 is leading 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 since December 2019 .

Completed 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).

The teaching of the Chair team covers teaching in the advanced 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).