Research Areas
Scholars of the Department of Socioeconomics contribute to the research profiles of the Faculty and University of Hamburg in many ways:
Health Economics
Scholars from the Department of Socioeconomics study aspects of health economics and health management. The research is integrated into the University’s Health Economics key research area, which is also supported by the interfaculty, interdisciplinary Hamburg Center for Health Economics (HCHE).
The DFG Research Training Group "Managerial and economic dimensions of health care quality" is to be highlighted. Since the fall of 2023, doctoral students from the fields of business administration, economics, health economics and related areas have been researching the cause-effect relationships in order to enable the management of quality in healthcare. The research is based on large data sets that have only recently become available.
Climate, Earth, and Environment
Scholars from the Department of Socioeconomics address environmental and climate-related economic issues, e.g., the European emissions trading scheme and other questions in energy and environmental management, in the Climate, Earth and Environment key research area. One of them is the interdisciplinary research cluster "Climate, Climatic Change, and Society" (CLICCS). Since 2018, CLICCS has been receiving support from the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder. The cluster means strengthening basic social and economic science research on climate change and interdisciplinary research cooperation between the natural and social sciences. It builds on the work of the Cluster of Excellence "Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction" (CliSAP, 2007-2018), in which researchers from the department also participated.
Beyond CLICCS, scientists are also involved in projects on the topic, for example Prof. Dr. Grischa Perino with the sub-project "EU Emissions Trading as a European Framework for the German Energy Transition" within the joint project "Ariadne: Evidence-based Assessment for the Design of the German Energy Transition" (Ariadne, external link, in German). Or Prof. Dr. Alexander Bassen, who leads the sub-project "Scientific support, monitoring, synthesis and networking" within the framework of "Climate Protection and Finance" (KlimFi) and its accompanying project "Sustainable Finance and Climate Protection" (SFCP, external link). Prof. Dr. Daniel Geiger is researching adaptation to the impacts of climate change in West Africa in the project "Resilience Building through Multi-Stakeholder Engagement in Anticipatory Action for Climate-Induced Disaster (REBUMAA, in German)“. This is part of an international research initiative with multiple project participants.
Sustainability
In addition to ecological sustainability, the Faculty looks at social, economic, and reflexive aspects of sustainability in the Faculty’s Sustainability area of potential. Several of our professorships have merged to form the Sustainable Finance Research Group.
In addition, the Center for Sustainable Society Research (CSS) deals with the topic of sustainability. Its goal is to broaden the understanding of social and economic institutions and processes of modern societies with regard to sustainability. The focus of the faculty's research center is on the social reconfigurations induced by climate change, which are regarded as central drivers of sustainability transformations.
The Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies "Futures of Sustainability" (DFG Kollegforschungsgruppe "Zukünfte der Nachhaltigkeit") started its work in September 2019 - with participation from the Department of Socioeconomics.
The inter-departmental Sustainability are of potential was already strengthened by a cluster of appointments that allowed us to fill several sociology professorships in the Department. This also reinforced inter-departmental cooperation within the Faculty. In 2022, the chair of Sustainable Business was also established in the department, which is linked to the management of the Sustainability Office of the UHH. Both of these measures can be traced back to the second funding line of the Excellence Initiative, in which the UHH was successful with its mission statement "Innovating and Cooperating for a Sustainable Future".
More
The profile initiative "Labor and Social Change" (in German) examines how the current changes in labor can be characterized and explained and what consequences they have for social inequality. The focus is on forms of work organization in businesses, the functioning of labor markets, macroeconomic factors and welfare state framework conditions. These are analyzed in the light of technological, socio-economic and cultural developments. Nineteen researchers from the fields of business administration, sociology, political science and economics take part in the profile initiative.
Scholars from the department, especially Prof. Dr. Katharina Manderscheid, are also involved in the inter-university research within the Research Training Group "Urban Future-Making: Professional agency across time and scale" (DFG Graduiertenkollegs „Urban Future-Making: Professional agency across time and scale“) since 2022.
The professors for the field of law organize the Hamburger Rechtsgespräche (in German) and publish the Rechtswissenschaftliche Beiträge (in German), a journal on socioeconomics in Hamburg.
Professors from the Department and their colleagues work in numerous fields in this research area and beyond. In particular, these include the interdisciplinary fields covered in the Department’s master’s programs: International Business and Sustainability; Human Resource Management; Labor, Economy and Society; Health Economics and Health Care Management; and Public and Nonprofit Studies. Visit the professors’ pages to find out more about the individual research areas.