Docent: Cornelius Schubert

Public participation in science has been an issue for more than 50 years. Recent calls for citizen science resonate the previous endeavors to transgress the boundaries of science by reaching out to communities of amateur scientists, interested laypersons or those affected by techno-scientific progress. The course will trace the development of public participation in science, its formats and modes of engagement in different fields of science, from natural science to engineering and social sciences as well as the arts. We will read foundational as well as recent texts and critically discuss the underlying concepts of participation. Students will become familiar with this field of study and will learn to assess and compare different models of citizen science as a form of transdisciplinary research.

Docent: Claudius Garten

The course will adress:

• conceptual perspectives and measurement of health and well-being;
• theoretical foundations and multidisciplinary perspectives on health and well-being;
• empirical findings on health and well-being in concrete areas of application

Students will learn about know central concepts, findings and methods from social science research on health and well-being research. They will be able to classify and reflect on relevant content in corresponding discourses. They will engage in reading and analyzing scientific texts and put the results of the analysis into an appropriate written form.

Docent: Sabine Lauer

The seminar deals with selected topics of the sociology of education, especially with educational inequalities. These will be jointly elaborated and discussed on the basis of classics of the sociology of education (Gary S. Becker, James S. Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu and Raymond Boudon)

Docent: Zirngiebl &  Maldonado-Mariscal

Thursday, 12-2 p.m.

ECTS: 4

Environment and innovation are important keywords for looking at social development processes. In this seminar, basic concepts and theories of social science innovation research are presented and discussed. Central topics include the analysis of the connection between innovation and social change and its significance in the context of concrete social transformation processes (such as the energy transition, transport transition, formation of new consumption patterns, etc.). In addition, the interconnectedness of social and ecological development paths is analysed with regard to the social conditions of potential coping strategies and their significance in the sustainability discourse is questioned. Conceptual foundations and empirical research results of social science innovation research as well as its history and development. Special attention is paid to theories that focus on the connection between innovation, social change and social transformation and analyse the interaction of technological and social aspects. At the same time, the seminar asks about the contribution of social science innovation research to reflecting on and overcoming social challenges.

Docent: Schubert

Monday 2-4 p.m.

4 ECTS

The course introduces the core ideas and developments in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It draws specifically on the sociology of science and the sociology of technology. Students will learn about approaches such as the Empirical Program of Relativism, the Social Construction of Technology, and Actor-Network Theory as well as about lines of research such as feminist STS, science communication, and technology assessment. By reading and discussing classic texts, the students will gain an in-depth understanding of the relations of science, technology, and society. They will be able to identify the main theoretical approaches and relate them to overarching issues in sociology, such as knowledge, power, and social change. The course is organised in weekly meetings to discuss the relevant literature. Students will hand in short memos on each text and actively engage in the classroom discussions.

Docent: Patch

Thursday 12-2 p.m.

This seminar introduces the life course and biographical approaches in social science. Students will encounter empirical qualitative research that illuminates how our life course trajectories are influenced by social structures and norms. We will look at changes in human lives individually over chronological age and collectively within and across different generations or cohorts. Students will learn about central domains of sociological interest through focusing their temporal dimension. Furthermore, students will have the opportunity to reflect on recent theoretical and methodological conceptualizations in life course and biographical research.

Docent: Patch

Thursday 4-6 p.m.

5 ECTS

Time is everywhere: from the rhythm of our day-to-day interactions to the amount of hours we allocate to daily activities; from the norms shaping our life choices year-to-year to the story we give to our lives as a whole; from biological and social development as humans to intergenerational links. In this seminar, we explore how time shows up in our lives and structures our gendered existence. How do capitalist means of production determine how certain gendered people live their daily lives? How do women’s and men’s lives differ over the span of a lifetime, and why? How does time constitute the notion of gender itself? What does gender have to do with how we conceive of the past and the future?

Docent: Schubert

Monday 10-12 a.m.

5 ECTS

The seminar takes stock of the recent developments in so-called posthumanist theories. Posthumanism cuts across many disciplines, from science and technology studies to literary studies and communication studies. The interdisciplinary field shares a common ground in questioning the traditional humanist focus of Western thought. The main aim of the seminar is to trace the emergence of posthumanist ideas in relation to sociology by reading texts from scholars such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour. We will especially follow the notion of de-centring the subject by relational thinking, by positioning the subject in complex environmental arrangements and by discussing the agency of bodies and technologies in posthumanist theories. The course is organised in weekly meetings to discuss the relevant literature. Students will hand in short memos on each text and actively engage in the classroom discussions.

Docent: Trischler

Wednesday 4-6 p.m.

5 ECTS

In this seminar, we discuss the social construction of audiences and their role in society. The focus lies on the construction of digital audiences, asking how technology affects audiences, their relations to production and the social formation and organization of the public sphere. On the basis of weekly readings, students get to know sociological theory as well as empirical case studies on audiences. This includes literature about practices and technologies of reception, consumption and reviewing in audiences (such as newspaper readers, gamers, podcast listeners, live crowds, museum visitors, social media followers, etc.) as well as practices of monitoring, assessing and understanding (or ‘imagining’) audiences during production. Finally, we also discuss academic practices and methodologies of audience construction, to comprehend and reflect upon the production of sociological knowledge. The course is organized in weekly meetings to discuss the relevant literature. Students are asked to actively engage in the classroom discussions and hand in short written weekly assignments which can form the basis of the final examination (oral exam or term paper).

Docent: Laumert

Thursday 10-12 a.m.

 5 ECTS

Social networks and their analysis have increasingly got into the interest of different fields of social sciences. In this seminar, students will learn definitions and theoretical concepts of social networks and get an in-depth look at social network research. By reading and discussing quantitative empirical studies, special intention is paid to the stability and change of social networks over the life course against the background of social and demographic change. We will especially look at the role and importance of social networks in old age. The students will reflect the relevance of social networks and social capital in ageing societies and their meaning for social inequalities. In addition, we will look at innovative ways of interventions to strengthen social cohesion.