Integrated Social Sciences (PhD) Program at a Glance

Societies in Change: Reshaping Cultures, Publics, and Institutions.

The PhD-Program in Integrated Social Sciences is a Research-Only-PhD Program. While favouring an interdisciplinary orientation, the program is open to research projects with a primary focus on one of the following disciplines: sociology, political science, mass communication, economics. Ideally the research projects combine two or more of the above mentioned disciplinary perspectives.

Research projects that fall into the domains of sociology, political science and economics centre on significant social, political, and economic transformations in contemporary societies. These transformations can be located in the fields of social inequality and exclusion, identity patterns, cultural orientations and changing values, migration and changing notions and forms of citizenship, social movements, civil society, political mobilization, functions and forms of the state, types and patterns of democracy and their policy performance, political attitudes, attitude change and public opinion, international relations, market liberalization and regulation. Area-studies and case studies are only considered, if their comparative implications are made evident.

Research projects in the domain of international communication focus on current developments and changes, both in terms of media institutions and media content. Comparative projects are welcome as much as empirical case-studies and media-specific analyses in a globalized communication context.

The program includes three years of PhD-study. Major work includes the program-guided development, elaboration, and finalization of the research plan, resulting in a dissertation. In addition, active participation in all program activities, most notably the weekly ISS-Research Colloquium (see Courses), is required. As part of their training supervisees are expected to assist in teaching and in research activities and to participate in the preparation of further program events.

The Ph.D. phase comprises six semesters of independent work on the dissertation, accompanied by a regular Research Colloquium.

The Research Colloquium takes place every semester on a weekly basis. Its purpose is to familiarize students with concrete problems in the actual practice of comparative empirical research. The colloquium is organized in such a way that it alternates between a guided tutorial in one week and a presentation session in the next week. This gives PhD-students an opportunity to present their research projects before the audience of graduate students. In the week before the presentation, the respective presenter guides a tutorial to which s/he assigns a reading (preferably of a methodological nature) referring to the topic that has been presented in the week thereafter. The tutorial is also attended by the respective PhD-student’s supervisor. Accordingly, PhD-students are familiarized with teaching while supervisors have an additional opportunity to mentor their supervisees.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Boehnke
Professor of Social Science Methodology

Prof. Dr. Matthijs Bogaards
Professor of Political Science

Prof. Dr. Hilke Brockmann
Professor of Sociology

Prof. Dr. Jan Delhey
Professor of Sociology

Prof. Dr. Karina De Santis
Lecturer in Statistics and Methods

Prof. Dr. Philipp Genschel
Professor of Political Science

Prof. Dr. Marion G. Müller
Professor of Mass Communication

Prof. Dr. Margrit Schreier
Professor of Empirical Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Prof. Dr. Marco Verweij
Professor of Political Science

Prof. Dr. Adalbert Wilhelm
Professor of Statistics

The ISS PhD program offers students the possibility to follow a career in the academia of their chosen social science field.