Faculty of Social Sciences

Research



In understanding society as the object of scientific research the Faculty of Social Sciences re-gards society theoretically as being in constant dynamic transformation and epistemologically as being recognizable through its constant dynamic transformation. Methodologically, it chooses quantitative and qualitative empirical research approaches.
The Faculty of Social Sciences organizes the study of society in five scientific disciplines: eth-nology, education sciences, political science, sociology and sports science, which are located in eight scientific institutes and one center: Institute for Democracy Research, Institute for Diversity Research, Institute for Educational Science, Institute for Ethnology, Institute for Theories and Methods of Social Sciences, Institute for Political Science, Institute for Sociology and Institute for Sports Sciences, Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS). With the Ethnological Collec-tion, the faculty also has one of the most important teaching and research collections in the German-speaking world and an internationally renowned place where processes of cultural change are comprehensively mapped.
  • Institut für Demokratieforschung mehr...
  • Institut für Diversitätsforschung mehr...
  • Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft mehr...
  • Institut für Ethnologie und Ethnologische Sammlung mehr...
  • Institut für Methoden und methodologische Grundlagen mehr...
  • Institut für Politikwissenschaft mehr...
  • Institut für Soziologie mehr...
  • Institut für Sportwissenschaften mehr...

Through joint appointments and honorary professorships, there are also research cooperations with the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN), the Max Planck Institute for Multiethnic and Multireligious Societies, the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI), the Sociological Research Institute e.V. (SOFI) and the Campus Institute Data Science (CIDAS).
In addition, the Faculty contributes its competencies to cross-faculty collaborative projects, thus combining its own perspectives with those of the humanities, economics and natural sciences to research issues relevant to society.

  • Campus Institut Data Science (CIDAS) mehr...
  • Centre for Modern East Asian Studies (CeMEAS) mehr...
  • Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS) mehr...
  • German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) mehr...
  • Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities (GCDH) mehr...
  • Göttinger Centrum für Geschlechterforschung (GCG) mehr...
  • Göttinger Graduiertenschule Gesellschaftswissenschaften (GGG) mehr...
  • Kooperationsstelle Hochschulen und Gewerkschaften mehr...
  • Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen (KFN) mehr...
  • Max-Planck-Institut für multiethnische und multireligiöse Gesellschaften mehr...
  • Netzwerk Lehrkräftefortbildung (NLF) mehr...
  • Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen (SOFI) e.V. mehr...
  • Zentrale Wissenschaftliche Einrichtung für Lehrer*innenbildung (ZEWIL) mehr...
  • Zentrum für Globale Migrationsstudien (CeMig) mehr...
  • Zentrum für Statistik (ZfS) mehr...

The research strength of the Faculty of Social Sciences thus arises from its anchoring in a multitude of specific subject traditions and their inter- and transdisciplinary networking. This strength lies in the combination of different scales (micro, meso, and macro) and spatial references (from local to national and regional to global) of empirical work as well as in a great variety of social science theories and methods that provide a framework for this work and are thus themselves constantly being developed further. In order to make optimal use of this potential and to develop it further, the Faculty of Social Sciences has set itself three common scientific focal points, which are themselves intertwined in a variety of ways: