Research profile

Scholars in the Department of Socioeconomics address environmental and climate-related economic issues such as the European emissions trading scheme and other matters concerning energy and environmental management as part of the university’s Climate, Earth and Environment core research area.

Cluster of excellence: The department is involved in the interdisciplinary research cluster Climate, Climatic Change, and Society (CLICCS). CLICCS has been funded through the Excellence Strategy of the German federal state and state governments since 2018. The cluster strengthens 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.

European and international projects: Many of our academics are involved in projects on this topic, such as Prof. Dr. Katharina Zimmermann, under whose leadership academics from five countries are jointly examining how welfare states respond to climate change in the EU-funded project WELRISCC (external link), 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), and Prof. Dr. Daniel Geiger, who 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). This is part of an international research initiative with multiple project participants.

Cross-faculty center: The Earth and Society Research Hub (ESRAH) likewise addresses the topic of sustainability. ESRAH, a research center in which the department is involved, focuses on the interplay of society, the climate, Earth, and the environment. Its goal is to investigate how we humans influence the Earth system – locally, regionally, and globally – and vice versa. It is currently headed by Prof. Dr. Grischa Perino of the Department of Socioeconomics.

DFG Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences: The DFG Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Futures of Sustainability commenced its work in September 2019, with the involvement of the Department of Socioeconomics. The centre brings academics together to examine how societies change under different imaginaries of sustainability. In addition to scientific debates with the international fellows and supporting doctoral and early career researchers, the centre is committed to “public sociology” and frequently offers discussion formats for anyone who is interested. It is currently headed by Prof. Dr. Frank Adloff of the Department of Socioeconomics.

Cluster appointment and Sustainability Office: The interdisciplinary emerging field of sustainability – which has been expanded into a guiding principle of the university being a sustainable university – was strengthened a number of years ago by a cluster appointment process that allowed us to fill several sociology professorships in the department and strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration within the faculty. In 2022, the Professorship for Sustainable Business was also established within the department, and this has ties with management of the UHH’s Sustainability Office.

Sustainable finance: The field of sustainable finance likewise belongs to the Climate, Earth and Environment core research area, but is presented here separately due to its size and activities.

Research seminar: The research seminar Sustainable Transformation & Cross Sector Collaboration examines the contribution made by public organizations as centralized agencies to the management of multiple crises caused by social, economic, and environmental transformation. The research seminar Environmental and Development Economics likewise addresses sustainability issues, focusing in particular on economic aspects.

Master’s degree: Matters relating to sustainability and Climate, Earth and Environment are so prevalent within the department that they feature in all of our degree programs. For example, the master’s degree program MSc Interdisciplinary Public and Nonprofit Studies (PUNO) looks into how the community develops in the face of the many challenges it faces, ranging from demographic change and digitalization to limited resources and political uncertainty, and how these can be addressed in innovative ways.

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Climate, Earth and Environment is one of the core research areas that make up the UHH’s research profile. It is also related to the university’s guiding principle of being a sustainable university.

Research group: A number of business administration professors within the Department of Socioeconomics initiated the Sustainable Finance Research Group (external link). The research group is comprised of professors from the fields of finance, accounting, and strategy, and aims to examine the role of financial markets and investments for sustainability in business practice and then derive recommendations for action. At the heart of this is the belief that financial markets represent a major lever with which to facilitate and promote social opportunity and environmental improvements. Among other things, the research group’s projects examine environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria, corporate strategy, stakeholder expectations, and the corresponding impacts on a company’s performance and risk.

Research projects (example): Prof. Dr. Alexander Bassen 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 und Climate Protection (SFCP, external link).

Master’s degree: In particular our English-language master’s degree MSc Innovation, Business and Sustainability (MIBAS) addresses questions related to sustainable finance such as “How can businesses make sustainability profitable?”,  “What opportunities do sustainable investments offer?”, and “What are the cornerstones of sustainability reporting?”.

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Sustainable finance falls within Climate, Earth and Environment, one of the core research areas within the UHH’s research profile, which is additionally tied to the university’s guiding principle of being a sustainable university.

Cross-faculty center: The interdisciplinary Hamburg Center for Health Economics (HCHE) is a cross-faculty research center in which the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, the University of Hamburg Business School, and the Faculty of Medicine (UKE) is involved. As an interdisciplinary center, it contributes to health economics research both in Germany and internationally. Its work focuses on supply, evaluation, hospitals, pharmaceuticals markets, and public health. A number of economists from our department have an instrumental part to play in the center.

DFG Research Training Group: The DFG Research Training Group Managerial and Economic Dimensions of Health Care Quality, which is part of the HCHE, deserves a special mention. Doctoral researchers from the fields of business administration, economics, health economics, and related areas research cause-effect relationships here to make it possible to manage quality in the health care sector. For this, they draw among other things on large data sets which have only recently become available.

Research seminar: The HCHE Research Seminar is a forum for HCHE members and guests in which invited scholars present their latest health economics research. 

Master’s degree: Health economics matters are also at the heart of our MSc Health Economics and Health Care Management (HEHCM) master’s degree course offered jointly by us and the Faculty of Business Administration.

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Health economics is one of the emerging fields within the UHH’s research profile. Emerging fields strengthen networking and offer huge potential to be expanded into a core research area.

Profile initiative: The profile initiative Labor and Social Change 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, socioeconomic, and cultural developments. Researchers from the fields of business administration, sociology, political science, and economics take part in the UHH profile initiative. The profile initiative’s current spokespersons are based in the Department of Socioeconomics.

Research projects (headed by researchers in the Department of Socioeconomics): These include, among others, the joint project Care Transformations. Forschungsverbund interdisziplinäre Carearbeitsforschung, which was funded by the Authority for Science, Research and Equality (BWFG) from 2020 to 2024. Researchers from the fields of sociology, economics, business administration, social work, and law have jointly dedicated their time to researching changes in paid and unpaid care work, and their cultural, economic, and technological contexts. There is also the project The social legitimacy of welfare measures in the “green transformation”, which is headed by the department’s Prof. Dr. Katharina Zimmermann and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as well as through the Excellence Strategy. This looks at the profound changes needed in the established modes of production and consumption to mitigate climate change and protect ecological resources. There are additionally ongoing projects that address female labor force participation and male working hours (likewise Prof. Dr. Katharina Zimmermann) and labor rights in precarious circumstances (Prof. Dr. Wolfang Menz), to name but a few. A list of projects can be found on the profile initiative’s website.

Research seminar: The research seminar Labour and Applied Economics brings interested researchers and students together to discuss the latest empirical applications within the economics of labor, education, migration, and family. It is organized jointly by the Economics and Socioeconomics departments.

Master’s degree: Questions concerning labor and social change are addressed in our master’s degree course MA Labor, Economics and Society (Economic and Sociological Studies) (AWG for short). The MA Human Resource Management likewise addresses matters relating to tomorrow’s working world in view of digitalization and mobile work. 

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Labor and Social Change is one of the profile initiatives that make up the UHH’s research profile. Profile initiatives address highly relevant topics that can become emerging fields in the years to come thanks to third-party projects.

DFG Research Training Group: Since 2022, department researchers, in particular Prof. Dr. Katharina Manderscheid, have also been involved in cross-university research as part of the DFG Research Training Group “Urban Future-Making: Professional Agency across Time and Scale”(external link).

Coalition: The professorships in the Law section jointly organize the Hamburger Rechtsgespräche (Hamburg Legal Talks) and produce the publication series Rechtswissenschaftliche Beiträge der Hamburger Sozialökonomie (Legal Contributions of the Hamburg Department of Socioeconomics) (in German). 

Both within these focus fields and beyond, the department’s professors and their staff are actively involved in numerous research areas. These include in particular the interdisciplinary fields that feature in the department’s master’s degree courses “International Business and Sustainability,” “Human Resource Management,” “Labor, Economics and Society,” “Health Economics and Health Care Management,” and “Public and Nonprofit Studies.” You can find information on individual core research areas on the professorship web pages.