The Team of the Chair for Macrosociology 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. 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 the module “European Societies” in the German BA studies of Sociology and the “Longitudinal Data Analysis” in the MA studies of Sociology.
The Chair holder Prof. Dr. Bernhard Ebbinghaus is currently the director of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford. Prof. Dr. Katja Möhring, junior professor for the Sociology of the Welfare State, acts as substitute for him.