Research training groups

The graduate program “Collective Decision-Making” is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and started in October of 2020. It is an interdisciplinary program that brings together researchers from economics, philosophy and political science to investigate new questions relating to election procedures, complex deliberative and multilevel decision-making procedures, and the formation of institutions. Up to 19 doctoral researchers and 13 professors from the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences and the Department of Philosophy will be involved in the program. Their aim is to link theoretical and empirical research on collective decision-making. The Spokesperson of the graduate program is Prof. Dr. Anke Gerber (Department of Economics). Further information can be found here.

The research training group “Urban Future-Making: Professional agency across time and scale”, which exists in cooperation with HafenCity University (HCU) and Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2022.

It is dedicated to questions concerning the shaping of urban space in the face of currently pressing challenges such as population growth, climate change and resource scarcity. These are particularly evident in cities and have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. The focus is specifically on individual groups of actors in order to find out to what extent people from administration, planning and science - the so-called “urban future-makers” - are able to equip urban developments for these challenges.

Involved in this cooperation are scientists from the departments of urban planning and civil engineering of the HCU as well as the department of transportation planning of the TUHH. Participating professorships of the WISO-Faculty of the University of Hamburg are Prof. Dr. Katharina Manderscheid (Co-Spokesperson of the research training group) and jun.-Prof. Dr. Franziska Müller. Further information can be found here.

GEM-STONES ("Globalisation, Europe and Multilateralism - Sophistication of the Transnational Order, Networks and European Strategies") is a new "European Joint Doctorate" (EJD) in Horizon 2020, the ongoing research and innovation program of the European Union (EU). The research agenda of the network is determined by the shared observation that the growth of international institutions significantly increases the complexity of the global system. Managing this complexity effectively and fairly is a challenge and a necessity for the EU. GEM-STONES involves 15 partners from science and industry. Fifteen doctoral students take part in the program, including four at the University of Hamburg. GEM-STONES is coordinated by the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. GEM-STONES is funded for four years (2017-2020). The financial volume amounts to almost 3.9 million Euro.

The Hamburg Center for Health Economics is home to the DFG-funded research training group "Managerial and economic dimensions of health care quality" with WISO participation. It offers a structured doctoral program in the field of health economics. Within this framework, doctoral students from the fields of business administration, economics, health economics or closely related fields research cause-and-effect relationships in order to enable the management of quality in the healthcare system.

During the past two decades the aspect of “health care quality” has tended to take a back seat to the goal of avoiding increases in expenditure and costs and has not received sufficient attention. It is therefore the goal if the Training Group to investigate and systematically analyze the influence of different stakeholder within the health care system towards the quality of care. The research program considers process-outcome-relations within different environments and between three different levels (level of service users, level of health care providers, level of payers). Participating professorships of the WISO-Faculty are Prof. Dr. Iris Kesternich, Prof. Dr. Mathias Kifmann and jun.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Kokot. Further information can be found here.

The School of Integrated Climate System Sciences (SICSS), founded as a part of the Hamburg Cluster of Excellence Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction (CliSAP), is now part of the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN). The research training programme combines climate system sciences such as meteorology, oceanography, and bio-geochemistry in a single training program. This English-language training program also integrates social sciences and economics as well as security and conflict studies. It offers a two-year interdisciplinary master’s program and a three-year doctoral training program.

The three-year program offered by the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), linked to the Faculty's Graduate School through a cooperation agreement, helps young researchers advance their professional careers and earn a qualification in the field of comparative regional studies. It offers methodological and theoretical research seminars in addition to excellent support within an international research environment. Participants have opportunities to publish their own scientific work, do research abroad, and participate in international conferences.

“Lose Verbindungen” research training group

In 2014, the BWFG (Behörde für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Gleichstelung) granted funding to the research training group Lose Verbindungen: Kollektivität im urbanen und digitalen Raum from the Hamburg state research funding program for three years. In greater Hamburg, forms of collectivity are diminishing due to the increasing overlap of urban and digital space. Under the guidance of Urs Stäheli from the Department of Social Sciences, participants of the research training group examined how collectivity has increasingly been based on “loose connections” unlike in more classic communities that draw upon tradition and familiarity. The research training group awarded eight scholarships for doctoral candidates and one post-doc position.

Mulit-Partner ITN: PRIMO

Doctoral and early stage researchers had the opportunity to expand their research expertise, join existing research teams, and enhance their career chances through the EU funded Innovative Training Network (ITN) which is a part of the Marie Curie measures. The consortium has been led by Cord Jakobeit from the Department of Social Sciences between 2013 and 2017 and examined the topic of Power and Region in a Multipolar World (PRIMO). In addition to the University of Hamburg, partner universities were in Great Britain, Portugal, Turkey, China, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Russia. Private sector supporters included Jaguar/Rover Ltd., the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, as well as Deutsche Bank.

Graduate School Media and Communication (GMaC)

The Graduate School of the Research Center for Media and Communications (RCMC) integrated instructors from six faculties at the University of Hamburg. Members of the Hans-Bredow-Institute for Media Research were also part of the RCMC. The doctoral program GMaC lasted three years. Dissertation topics ranged from media convergence, entertainment media and their products and formats, international and inter-cultural media phenomena, the transnational public sphere, to gaming and virtual reality.