General information
The Mannheim Centre for European Social Research is an interdisciplinary research institute of the University of Mannheim. It is Germany’s largest university based social science research centre and is among Europe’s leading centres for the comparative study of the development and integration of the European societies and the European political systems. It is affiliated to the faculty of social sciences (University of Mannheim), which ranks at the top (place 1) in the field of sociology and political science in Germany according to several national and international rankings.
MZES concentrates research on issues of core significance in the rapid transformation of social and political conditions in Europe, including at present the following main areas of research: Social structures and social inequality in European societies / Social services and social security / Migration, integration and ethnic conflicts / Family and kinship relations / Moral foundations of societal integration / Political participation and electoral behaviour / Political parties and electoral systems / Governance in the European Union and international embeddedness of European governance / Institutionalisation of international negotiation systems / Development of a European regional system in Eastern Europe.
In each of these areas, research issues are studied in a decidedly European perspective in various interrelated projects. On average, a staff of about 70 project directors, researchers and administrators is working in some 50 projects, most of them peer evaluated and financed by outside research grants. In the three-year period 2001-2003 MZES has received approximately 4 million € in outside grants. Research is supported by an exemplary infrastructure providing high standard computing-, data-, library-, and document resources, including the Eurodata research archive which holds one of Europe’s most encompassing collection of data sources for comparative research on Europe and which is publishing a momentous ‘Societies of Europe’ data handbook series.
Research programme
MZES researchers are involved in leading roles in many national and international co-operative research endeavours. Recently, MZES has led two large scale EU-financed TMR networks (“Family and the Welfare State in Europe”; “Political Representation and Electoral Behaviour in the European Union”) and it has lead several international research teams, among others on education and stratification outcomes (Müller/Shavit), and on transition from education to work (Müller in collaboration with members of ESRI in Dublin); on self-employment in advanced economies (Müller with Arum from New York University NYU); on social Indicators and welfare measurement (Noll from ZUMA and Kraus at MZES). At present, MZES is co-ordinating the ESF network “Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy (CID)” with research teams from 14 countries (Van Deth), and it is coordinating the 6th FP NoE CONNEX “Efficient and Democratic Governance in a Multilevel Europe” (Kohler-Koch). Van Deth is leading the German team conducting the “European Social Survey”(ESS) and played a central role in the international team preparing the ESS questionnaire module on Social Capital". Esser and Brüderl are involved in key roles in an upcoming German Research Foundation financed large scale panel study on families and social relations. MZES also participates in the 5th EU-FP research and training network “Dynamics and Obstacles of European Governance” and in the 5th EU-FP European Research Network of outstanding European research centres on “Economic Change, Unequal Life Chances and Quality of life”, and in several other international research programmes.
Many researchers from the institute have collaborated with official bodies and given policy advice to the German Government (Müller, Esser, Noll and others) and the European Commission (Kohler-Koch).
MZES has its own young scholars dissertation training program and has an international Fellowship Program for cooperation with outstanding international scholars. MZES is highly active in organizing international research conferences, bringing numerous eminent international scholars to the Centre. In the period 2000-2002 MZES researchers have published more than 30 books, edited some 20 volumes, and published close to 300 articles in scientific journals or edited volumes.