University research institutions

The interdisciplinary Sustainability Research Centre (artec) is a University of Bremen Central Research Unit (CRU) and conducts research on national and international sustainability issues. Current research projects focus on climate policy, sustainable consumption and energy and material flows.

Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) is an interdisciplinary cooperative graduate school cooperating with the University of Bremen and Jacobs University Bremen as part of the funding process of the Excellence Initiative. BIGSSS covers the core disciplines of political science, sociology and psychology, solid methodical foundations in empirical social research and also includes such neighbouring disciplines as law, economics, health sciences and communication sciences. Rather that having a single supervisor, support comes from committees of up to three university lecturers who are involved in doctoral the project from the first year. 

The Research Centre on Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM) is a "Central Research Unit" (CRU) at the University of Bremen. SOCIUM conducts interdisciplinary research on issues of the social, economic, political, cultural, legal, historic and socio-medical causes, consequences and developments of social inequality and social policy. Research is mainly carried in out by the disciplines Health Sciences, Political Science, Sociology, Economics and Law.

The Labour and Politics Centre (Zentrum für Arbeit und Politik- zap), in close collaboration with Bremen Chamber of Employees, offers courses to anyone looking to examine "labour" and "society" more closely. As part of a range of education concepts, it conveys knowledge and methods for a better understanding and assessment of social dynamics. Through a wide range of vocational research projects, the Labour and Politics Centre contributes to regional and national knowledge transfers to companies, unions, schools and other social institutions.

The Collaborative Research Initiative Worlds of Contradiction focusses on the phenomena, concepts, socially relevant aspects, and methodological consequences of contradiction from the perspective of the humanities. The initiative is a cooperation of five faculties of the University of Bremen – the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Department of Cultural Studies, the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies, the Faculty of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences – and is organized into the project areas Power Differences, Forms of Knowledge, Practices of Negotiation.