Prof. Dr. Birgit Pfau-Effinger

Birgit Pfau-Effinger is Research Professor for Sociology of Cultural Change and Institutional Change (Senior Research Professor) at the University of Hamburg. She has received her Doctoral Degree and habilitated at the Universität Bremen. She was Professor  at Universities in Berlin and Jena before she was appointed as Chair for Social Structure Analysis and Scientific Co-Director of the Centre of Globalisation and Governance (CGG) at the Hamburg University 2003. From 2016-2018 she was also research professor at the University of Southern Denmark. She was visiting professor at the Universities of Tampere/Finland, Aalborg/Denmark and the Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona/Spain.

She has published several books and numerous articles in academic journals. Her article in Work, Employment and Society (WES) was distinguished in 2012 as “Favorite WES article of the last 25 years” by the British Sociological Association, the Editors of WES, and SAGE, articles of her in the Journal of Social Policy and in European Societies are since many years among the top ten most cited articles in the Journal.  

She received several awards for her research. She was appointed by the German Research Council (DFG) as “Outstanding Women Academics and Scientists” for AcademiaNet’ 2010 and awarded as “Honorary Professor for Comparative Welfare State Research” at the University of Southern Denmark (2011-2014). The President of the University of Hamburg awarded her the current senior research professorship for “outstanding performance in research and teaching” (2018-2023). She was also ‘Friedlander Lecturer 2018-2019 on International Social Welfare ‘of the University of California, Berkeley, May 2019.

Her main research interests include the relationship between cultural change and welfare state change; the role of culture and institutions for the explanation of cross-national differences in gender, care and the work-family relationship; the explanation of the historical development of the ‘male breadwinner family’; the diversity of development paths of the work-family relationship, and the changing relationship between formal and informal work. She received grants from the German Research Council (DFG), the ESF and the EU and had leading roles in international collaborative research programs like the COST A13 Action, the ESF Research Network GIER and the EU Network of Excellence RECWOWE. She was elected co-editor of “Work, Employment and Society”, and she is member of the Board of ESPAnet. She was Friedlander Lecturer 2018-2019 on International Social Welfare of the University of California, Berkeley.

Her main research focus is on theorizing and research on

• Theorising and research about culture and welfare state change
• Theory of the gender arrangement and gender culture
• Explanation of historical development paths and cross-national differences in the work-family relationship
• Comparative analyses of family policies and long-term care policies
• Change in the relationship between formal and informal work
• Theorising and research about the cultural and institutional framework of the society-animal relationship
• Some of her most recent articles are published in Advances in Climate Change Research, Ageing & Society, American Behavioral
• Scientist, and the Journal of European Social Policy (forthcoming), and she is co-editor of the International Oxford Handbook of
• Family Policy: A Life-Course Perspective (forthcoming).

Full CV