Supervisors and Research Topics

Altreiter Carina

  • work and employment; precarity; atypical employment, unemployment

  • individualisation, subjectivation; boundary-less work

  • social inequalities regarding work and employment

  • future developments of work and employment; working-time reduction; novel arrangements of working and living

  • school-to-work transition, youth labour market

  • class analysis and class theory

  • performativity of competition; competitization;

  • solidarity; social inclusion and exclusion; right-wing populism

Brunner Karl Michael

  • Consumption and society

  • Sociology of sustainable development

  • Sustainable consumption

  • Energy and social inequality

  • Socio-ecological transformation

Frerichs Sabine

  • Theories of economic action (including institutional, behavioural and neuro-economics)

  • Sociology of money and debt relations

  • Development of capitalism (from industrial to financial capitalism), varieties of capitalism (in national and regional comparison)

  • Types of solidarity in modern societies (national and transnational)

  • Societal conditions and consequences of economic integration (Europeanization, globalisation)

  • Transformations of the welfare state (from welfare to workfare and debtfare)

  • The role of law in the market society (free contracts, legal personhood, private property, commodification), transnational law

  • Questions of global sustainable development and an interdisciplinary Sustainability Science

Fritsch Nina-Sophie

  • Social structure analysis

  • Topics regarding social inequality (e.g. educational and income inequality; poverty; precarisation and de-standardisation)

  • Labour market and professions

  • Development of low wages in national and historical comparison

  • The phenomena of ‘Working Poor’ in Europe

  • Gender inequality (e.g. occupational gender segregation)

  • Sociological perspectives of science at universities

  • Quantitative and qualitative methods of empirical research

Hofbauer Johanna

  • Industrial and post-industrial work organisation and control of work; case studies of selected sectors and branches, e.g. automotive and textile industry; services in care and trade; knowledge work

  • Employment policy; regular and atypical employment; precarisation

  • Skill requirements and formation of subjectivity at work

  • Implementation of technology, digital work, social robotics

  • Socioeconomic perspectives on inequality

  • Managing diversity in companies, dimensions of cultural diversity (gender, race, age, disability)

  • Economic-sociological analysis of institutions such as markets, organisations or companies, wage labour, social networks;

Jost Gerhard

  • Individual and society: theoretical and empirical research (e.g. identity and biographies of various social groups)

  • Empirical qualitative methods and their (partial) application in studies – regarding selected qualitative survey and evaluation methods (e.g. interviews, field research)

  • Gerontology  (e.g. old-age poverty, urban and rural differences, intergenerational relations, networks

  • Social Inequality (e.g. educational disadvantages, income and wealth inequality, precarisation, social problems)

  • Social diagnoses (e.g. individualisation hypothesis, accelerated society, event society, knowledge society)

  • Acceleration of society through digitalization? Reflections on Hartmut Rosa

  • Social relations as figurations determined by power (Norbert Elias)

  • On the importance of knowledge - theories on a basic category

  • Transitions in the life course: from studies to work

  • Fascination field research - ethnographic methods in (classical) studies

Kanitsar Georg

  • Field, laboratory and survey experiments of social norms and pro-social behaviour

  • Rational choice sociology/ analytical sociology (e.g. modelling of economic and sociological conceptions of men, game theoretical problem analysis with social scientific relevance, …)

  • Economic-sociological research questions (e.g. market and morality, sociological perspectives of labour markets, reputation in economic relations, sociological market theories, networks of labour markets, Money knowledge and money use, …)

  • Social inequality, social mobility and distributive justice

  • Trust, cooperation and solidarity

Miklautz Elfie

  • Research on creative industry (studies on selective branches such as art market, and career paths, working and living conditions of creative individuals)

  • Hidden preconditions of success in classical music business

  • Musicians – conformist top athletes or creative individualists?

  • Sense and non-sense of competition in music business

  • Exchange processes (market, gifts, donations)

  • Cultural sociology

  • Consumption and social inequality

  • Advertisement

  • Products and their meaning

Nessel Sebastian

  • Economic sociology

  • Sociology of money

  • (Comparative) analysis of capitalism

  • Sociological theory

  • Qualitative social research

  • Sustainable consumption

Reiger Horst

  • In general, empirical theses relying on quantitative and qualitative methods, including small collections of primary data

  • Analysis of specific research questions using data sets of social science (secondary data analysis), e.g. EVS, WVS, EuroStat, ESS

  • Recent literature regarding operationalisation of complex concepts and questionnaire method

  • Xenophobia, racism and group related misanthropy – theoretical, empirical and practical perspectives

  • Satisfaction of bachelor students at Austrian universities

  • Globalisation theories

  • Recent aspects of research on populism

  • Aspects of interaction (theory of the individual, multiple selves, ritualised forms of interaction, social structure and social identity)

Sardadvar Karin

  • Sociological research of work

  • Work and gender

  • Concepts of work (work/leisure; paid/unpaid work)

  • Employment and working conditions in service sectors (especially cleaning sector, care sector)

  • Reproductive work (domestic work, care)

  • Care (e.g. concepts of care, working conditions in the care sector, family carers, childcare)

  • Concepts of work-life balance (work-life balance, reconciliation of employment and domestic work, work and life)

  • Interpretive theories (sociology of knowledge, social constructivism, symbolic interactionism)

  • Interpretive social research, qualitative research methods

Simsa Ruth

  • Best practice of civil society involvement in refugee support

  • Best practice of cooperation between politics and civil society in relation to climate activism

  • Radical versus moderate - attributions, conflicts and success factors of social movements

  • Civil society involvement in the care of Ukrainian refugees

  • Development of the climate movement in Austria

  • Management of non-profit organizations

  • Current developments in organizations

  • Social inequality and its specific effects in the corona crisis