The Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences offers a structured doctoral program and a research environment for doctoral researchers interested in problems of democracy and social inclusion. BGSS’s mission is to prepare doctoral researchers for a career as professional social scientists or political scientists within and outside the academic world. The BGSS program is bi-disciplinary, merging perspectives from political science and sociology. It encourages doctoral research on the interface of democracy and democratization with inequality and diversity, shaping processes of inclusion and exclusion.

Research at BGSS is based on interdisciplinary collaboration between sociology and political science. It concentrates on the comparative analysis of problems of social inclusion and democratic performance.

Inclusion:

Welfare State, Migration, Education, Labor Markets, Social Inequality and Change, and Global Cities

Democracy:

Democratization, Democracy and its Institutions, Constitutionalism and Rule of Law, Individuals and Policies, Civil Society and Social Movements

The three-year program offers intensive individual supervision and a structured curriculum, combining high-level courses on theory and methods, milestones assuring continuous progress and practical elements like teaching, publishing and research internships.

Prof. Dr. Silvia von Steinsdorff, PhD Dr Martin Nagelschmidt Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin democratisation programme

sociology, political science, social inclusion, democratic performance