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The AS Hybrid Speaker Series on Analytical–Empirical Sociology will take place in Winter 2025 at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim. The series brings together international and local speakers and invites discussion of key societal challenges and developments. Talks are held on Tuesdays from 13:45–15:15 at MZES, A5, 6, 68159 Mannheim and online.

Program (Winter 2025):

16.09 – Jennifer Hill (NYU Steinhardt)
21.10 – Irena Kogan (University of Mannheim)
11.11 – Andreas Wimmer (Columbia University)
02.12 – Markus Strohmaier (University of Mannheim)

Participation/Zoom: Please subscribe to the mailing list to receive abstracts and Zoom links. No separate registration is required for online participation.

Organization/Contact: Marc Helbling, Richard Traunmüller, Malte Reichelt.

As in 2024, the “Venice Seminar” on “Analytical Sociology: Theory and Empirical Applications” will again take place in Venice, Italy. The organizers welcome theoretical contributions in the field of analytical sociology or theory-driven empirical social research on any topic. There will be slots for a maximum of 30 oral presentations (30 min. including discussion) and 25 posters. The poster sessions will begin with short introductory presentations in the main conference hall. Language of presentation is English. Organisation: The workshop is organized by Josef Brüderl and Gerrit Bauer (LMU Munich) in cooperation with the Venice International University (VIU) and the Academy of Sociology (AS). The Venice International University (VIU) buildings are located on the small island of San Servolo (about 10 minutes by boat from the historic city centre). Participants can book hotel rooms either on San Servolo or in the city centre. There is no workshop fee, but no covering of travel costs. Abstract Submission: If you would like to present a paper/poster, please send an abstract…

…(one page max.) by July 18^th to venice@soziologie.uni-muenchen.de. Please indicate whether you prefer an oral presentation, a poster, or are indifferent. A preliminary programme will be available in early August. For further organizational details please see the workshop homepage.

The 5th Conference of the Academy of Sociology will take place at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) from October 8 to 10, 2025. The theme of the conference is “Societal Challenges – Sociological Answers?”. The conference draws attention to the problem-solving capacities of sociology and the transfer of evidence-based findings to the public and to policy makers. Please click here for the conference program. The registration is open by August 31, 2025.

Congress webiste: click here We look forward to seeing you in Mainz!

In recent years, replicability, reproducibility, robustness, and validity of empirical findings became a focal and intensively debated and researched topic in the behavioral and social sciences. Aside from an intensive scientific discourse, these dynamics caused demands for change and innovation. In response to these developments, the META-REP program is oriented towards three main (meta-)scientific research goals: (1) to define, describe, and assess “replicability” (the what-question), (2) to provide explanations for replication rates, heterogeneity and deviation in replication results (the why-question), and (3) to assess effectiveness and efficiency of strategies and change aimed at improving robustness (the how-question). The conference will provide a platform for the exchange of manifold replication-related research findings and innovation from all scientific disciplines (as well as science …

… communicators, delegates from funding agencies, academies, or science organizations). Location: Katholische Akademie in Bayern. Organizer: Prof. Dr. Mario Gollwitzer (LMU Munich, META-REP Program Coordinator) Submission deadline: April 30, 2024. For the conference website click here.

This study analyzed ego-centric kinship network data from adults aged 25–35 across seven Western societies: Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the UK, and the US. These data surpass existing data sources in the coverage of ties to nuclear, extended, and complex kin, allowing for a novel perspective on family and kinship as sources of influence, social integration, and support. This perspective yields three main findings that reach beyond the extant focus on the nuclear family. First, extended kin are central to younger adults’ lives. They account for approximately half of the family members that younger adults are emotionally close to, in regular contact with, and deem important in their lives. Second, kinship networks are matrilineally tilted. Compared to paternal kin, maternal kin are more often perceived as important, more frequently contacted, emotionally closer, and more reliable …

… as a source of support. These differences are sizable, emphasizing the vital role of kinship line in contemporary Western families. Third, the effects of parental separation permeate deeply into the family network, weakening ties particularly in the paternal line. Compensation of these relational losses through complex kin is limited in most countries but substantial in the US.

Elite American universities are a site of struggle. Within them is a divided intellectual culture where faculty adopt distinct orientations toward their work activities, and they compete for position and power. To outcompete their peers, faculty innovate and secure more and varied forms of resources. The university supports these efforts with new programs, centers, and institutional initiatives, and it consecrates them through the selective conferral of promotions to tenure, full professorships, and administrative leadership positions. In this way the elite university as a field reproduces the legitimacy of elite faculty and the university’s dominant position in the larger academic field, but in a way adaptive to the changing environment. We present evidence of this via a full census of faculty members’ backgrounds, accrued capital, …

… and administrative powers – e.g., attributes, affiliations, relationships, work activities, accomplishments and ranks – at Stanford University over a 25-year period. Multiple correspondence analysis reveal the university culture and habitus is divided, with hard science faculty building high-output labs aimed at securing scientific capital, and humanistic and social science faculty adopting activist concerns and developing popular courses to secure intellectual capital. Using hazard models, we show these forms of capital have distinct appeal to stages of promotion (tenure, full, leadership). We also show how faculty in both cultures innovate and secure new forms of capital (e.g., patents, donor funds, social media mentions – i.e., mostly toward new forms of scientific capital), increasing their pool of accrued resources (and the university’s), and raising the bar on promotion criteria. In conclusion we discuss how this system of struggle has implications for knowledge production. If you want to attend in person, please visit our event page for registration (for free). Online attendance is possible without registration via Zoom (click here, Meeting ID: 384 326 1393, Passcode: 2324).

A large body of research has documented persistent social inequalities in access to higher education. In recent years, therefore, there has been growing research and policy interest in how such inequalities can be mitigated, for example through individual guidance counselling. Such individual guidance programmes often aim to promote the enrolment of students from low social backgrounds. However, social inequality in enrolment could also be reduced by individuals from high social backgrounds taking up vocational education and training, which is an attractive option also for high school leavers in Germany. Moreover, if we zoom in on the group of students from low social origins, there may be considerable effect heterogeneity, as students with a migrant background already tend to study …

… more often than their peers even without counselling, because they are more strongly oriented towards intergenerational status gain. I will present findings on these questions from the project “Future and Career Plans before Leaving High School”. The project uses a randomised controlled trial study design with more than 1000 high school students embedded in a panel survey to evaluate the effect of an individual and intensive counselling programme in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The results suggest that individual and intensive counselling can significantly reduce social inequalities in access to higher education, with opposite effects for students from high and low social backgrounds. Looking only at students from low SES, we find a stronger positive effect of counselling on enrolment for non-migrant students. Contrary to our expectation, this migration-related heterogeneity in the effect cannot be attributed to the status-gain motive. Beyond these individual-level programme effects, I will also discuss how such programmes affect aggregate social inequality and how this depends, for example, on the scale of implementation. If you want to attend in person, please visit our event page for registration (for free). Online attendance is possible without registration via Zoom (click here, Meeting ID: 384 326 1393, Passcode: 2324).

The AS Hybrid Speaker Series at the Institute for Sociology and Social Psychology (ISS), University of Cologne, which started in summer 2023, will continue in winter term 2023/24. In a mix of international and local speakers, the series invites to discussions about how sociological scholarship addresses major societal challenges and developments. The following lectures will be given:

15.11.23 – Marita Jacob (Köln), Unlocking Equal Opportunities: How Counseling Mitigates Social Inequality in University Enrollment in Germany
13.12.23 – Daniel McFarland (Stanford), Homo Academicus Stanfordiensis: The University as Strategic Action Field
20.12.23 – Thomas Leopold (Köln), Beyond the Nuclear Family: New Data on Kinship Networks Reveal Matrilineal Tilts, Ripple Effects of Divorce, and the Importance of Extended Kin

Organization: Clemens Kroneberg (Cologne), Malte Reichelt (Bamberg).

If you want to attend in person, please visit our event page for registration (for free). Online attendance is possible without registration via Zoom (click here, Meeting ID: 384 326 1393, Passcode: 2324).

From August 28-30, 2023, our 4th Academy of Sociology conference ‘Knowledge Societies’ will be held at the University of Bern (Switzerland), including:

20 thematic sessions with 80 talks given by recognized senior and junior researchers
keynotes by Claudia Buchmann (Ohio State University), Jan Skopek (Trinity College Dublin), and Daniel Oesch (University of Lausanne)
Best Dissertation & Poster Award
Apero (1st day) and conference dinner (2nd day)

The detailed program, list of speakers and abstracts is available here. For registration please click here. See you soon in Bern!

Wednesday, June 28th, 2023, 17.45, ISS Cologne (in-person or via ZOOM) The idea that mate pursuit unfolds in a market is the theoretical foundation for most social science studies of dating and marriage. Within that context, scholars argue that romantic pairings result from two factors: the preferences that people have for their partners and the demographic makeup of the market (i.e., opportunities). Much attention has been paid to measuring romantic preferences – that is, who desires whom – and also documenting how relationship patterns vary with market composition. But little attention has been paid to understanding how an individual’s preferences and opportunities combine in the market, i.e., the workings of the market. A market for dating or marriage implies that singles /compete/ for desirable partners – this competition determines who ends up with whom and who ends up alone. While competition is shaped by preferences and opportunities, it is not a simple sum of these things. …

… In her talk, Elizabeth Bruch presents a novel framework for studying competition in dating or marriage markets and apply it to data on messaging patterns observed within an online dating site. Our analyses provide insight into the nature of competition in this market – for example, who is most competitive, who competes with whom, and who faces the stiffest competition – and how this competition arises out of preferences and opportunities. In doing so, we develop a deeper understanding of how population – and individual-level factors combine to shape relationship outcomes. Elizabeth Bruch is a Professor of Sociology at Michigan University. For information about online or in-person attendance, please click here.