Departmental research areas

At a glance

The Department of Social-Scientific European Studies has well-established interdisciplinary research and corresponding teaching interests in such innovative areas as

• convergence and divergence of economic, political, demographic, and social development processes in Europe on regional, national, and international levels
• the interplay of these various levels in processes of ‘Europeanization’ (governance and European policies)
• regional and interregional, as well as cross-border processes in the negotiation, implementation, and institutionalization of cooperation, with special reference to European governance and policy development
• formative/constitutive regionalization processes
• identity construction in Europe at different levels
• divergent tracks in European urban and regional development
• interregional and international migration.

The interdisciplinary profile of the department, with political scientists, sociologists, and geographers each contributing their own methodology and expertise, offers specific research openings within a common empirical approach to current issues of European societies and development. The application of empirical quantitative and qualitative social research methods to questions of mobility and migration, or to new populist and regionalist movements on the one hand, and the evaluation of European unification, or of regional and social disparities etc. on the other, offer lines of investigation that complement Saarland University’s historically and culturally oriented research programs into Europe and its development.