The Research Unit Education, Counselling, and the Life Course focuses on education and learning processes within a shared framework of a lifetime perspective. It combines different theoretical approaches related to sociological theory traditions, as well as human development theory and social pedagogy. Current issues of research are: biographies in modern societies with regard to age, gender and migration, the concept of Lifelong Learning, education and learning throughout the lifespan; poverty, social differences and inequity, as well as humanistic and person-centred counselling approaches. Particular emphasis is placed on methodological training in the area of interpretative social research, as well as on theories and methodology of biographical research. The Research Unit has three sub units: biography and education, theory of social work and humanistic counselling.