Biography, Education and Society

The research unit addresses education, socialization and learning in the dimension of lifetime and analyzes them in the nexus of individual-biographical and societal context. Theoretically we refer to the international and interdisciplinary discourse of biographical research and theories of social inequality, in the empirical analysis we use a broad spectrum of mainly qualitative methods, especially approaches of biographical research and ethnography.

Our approach focuses on educational processes in the interplay between biographies, institutions and social conditions. We are also interested in the consequences that can be derived from this research for (social) educational practice. Biography-oriented approaches are developed, explored and scientifically reflected in cooperation with various fields of practice (adult education, social work, higher education, historical-political education, etc.).  

In different types of projects we work on the following topics: Education and social participation, students’ biographies and social upward mobility in higher education, educational biographies in the migration society, language biographies and translation experiences in the context of flight, migration and educational institutions (school and higher education), biographical narrative and learning in political education, gender, and finally methodological questions of biographical research.