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GSC 263:  Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS)

Subject Area Social Sciences
Psychology
Term from 2008 to 2019
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 49619654
 
Final Report Year 2020

Final Report Abstract

The Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences was founded as an inter-university institution of the University of Bremen (UB) and the private Jacobs University Bremen (Jacobs) in 2008. It drew on the experience of the Graduate School of Social Science (GSSS) at UB (2003-2008) and two units at Jacobs, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS) and the Jacobs Center on Lifelong Learning and Institu-tional Development (JCLL). Both its structure and its interdisciplinary focus are unique in German doctoral education. BIGSSS is fully integrated into the vibrant research communities at both universities. It has its own well-equipped buildings on each campus, and the community of currently 65 Bremen faculty members, 12 exter-nal faculty members and 79 regular doctoral fellows makes use of resources at both universities. Other doc-toral researchers from either university can become “Affiliated Fellows” who take part in our courses and doctoral colloquia. In 2017, BIGSSS introduced a new category of “adjunct fellows” to provide a low-threshold integration with an easy application process and no mandatory curricular elements. Since 2012, research at BIGSSS has been undertaken under the interdisciplinary umbrella theme Changing Patterns of Social and Political Integration, divided into three Thematic Fields: Global Governance and Regional Integration; Welfare State, Inequality, and Quality of Life; and Changing Lives in Changing Socio-Cultural Contexts. As of 2020, this structure will be replaced by a more flexible thematic arrangement. The graduate school depends on faculty located at various research institutes at UB and Jacobs. It needs to take care of a more adaptive fit between the research projects of its fellows and the faculty, e.g. as set by the CRC “Global Dynamics of Social Policy” (2018), the “Research Center Social Cohesion” (in founda-tion, funded by the BMBF) or the recently granted DFG-Research Training Group “Social Dynamics of the Self“ (2020). In the new and the old thematic settings, political science, sociology, and psychology are the core disciplines. However, BIGSSS also incorporates knowledge from law, health and behavioral econom-ics, business administration, social geography, history, and cultural studies—all represented by its faculty. The BIGSSS philosophy of graduate education holds that a structured curriculum and careful guidance can be used to foster early academic independence and support scholarly creativity. Several key elements are involved: doctoral candidates submit their own research proposals when applying; in-house faculty mem-bers are readily available for research consultation; dissertation committees, rather than single advisors, play an active supervisory role; the progress of each individual project is monitored by (at least) annual meet-ings and an additional dissertation completion meeting provides guidance for the post-doctoral period; and the curriculum of theory and methods offerings is “demand-tailored” to meet the specific needs of fellows’ research projects. After the end of the invaluable support by the Excellence Initiative, BIGSSS will continue as an interna-tional graduate school for social sciences, providing and developing best practices of excellent graduate education. Our goal is to equip young scholars with the necessary skills, expertise and critical mindset to meet the challenges of political and social integration in the academic and non-academic labour market.

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