Mission

The Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS) aims to establish an excellent working and learning environment for exceptionally qualified early-career researchers wishing to pursue doctoral (and in some cases post-doctoral studies) in the Social Sciences and to focus on some of the most crucial social, economic and policy challenges modern knowledge-based societies are faced with, namely the complex interaction of

1. variations in the ability of individuals in modern societies to acquire the necessary personal competences, skills and educational qualifications in an environment of increasing social, economic and political uncertainty;
2. the way educational institutions adapt to these developments and to demographic change;
3. how labor markets  evolve in response to global competition for market shares, investment and human capital as well as to demographic change;
4. how problems of social exclusion arise from variations in access to education and work in knowledge-based economies and societies; and
5. how policy makers seek to solve problems arising from the changes sketched above, how they adjust institutions and organizations at the political level, how they seek to re-capture political control and how it may be possible to establish democratic accountability across a complex web of governance tiers from the local to the global.

The establishment of BAGSS is based on our recognition that most complex problems of modern knowledge-based societies require the collaboration of social scientists across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Therefore, BAGSS combines the expertise of sociologists, psychologists, educational scientists, political scientists, economists, demographers and statisticians across two major Faculties of the University (the Faculty of Social Sciences, Economics and Business Management and the Faculty of Human Sciences).

BAGSS will build on

1. well-established, externally funded and sustained interdisciplinary research at the University (e.g., under the umbrella of the Institute for Longitudinal Educational Research Bamberg, INBIL) and
2. a successful interdisciplinary collaboration in the provision of a structured doctoral program on ‘Markets and Social Systems in Europe’ (2002-2012).

BAGSS aims to deepen the interdisciplinary research agenda further, educate a new generation of scholars to an excellent professional standard and embed best practice in the provision of structured doctoral programs at the University of Bamberg even more firmly.

Despite the involvement of a broad range of social scientists from several disciplines, BAGSS has a coherent approach. It employs a well-defined thematic focus that serves as a lens exemplifying serious policy challenges modern societies are faced with.  Doctoral students will learn to analyze such complex phenomena using a distinctive approach: they employ an (interdisciplinary) theoretical focus on the role of social, economic and political institutions and a modern methodological approach to modelling these changes rigorously in their multi-level nature as well as their dynamic character, analysing patterns of stability and change over historical time and over the life courses of individuals, organizations and states. Based on the broader theoretical and methodological skills acquired during their doctoral studies, Bamberg Social Science graduates will be able to analyse a wide array of social and political problems well beyond the Graduate Schools thematic focus.