The Department of Social Work, Social Policy and Global Development offers a Doctorate in Social Policy with a focus on international and comparative social policy, as well as on social policy developments in Switzerland. Doctoral projects are particularly welcome in, but not limited to, the following research areas: welfare systems, education policy (incl. early childhood/compulsory/tertiary), migration and social policy, work/life balance and work/family reconciliation, gender and social policy, childhood/youth and social policy, religion and social policy, multilevel governance and regional/local policy developments. The Department is methodologically open to quantitative and qualitative approaches, to foundational as well as applied research projects.

Supervision is offered on an individual basis and as part of a doctoral programme. Individually supervised doctoral researchers are invited to present their work at Departmental research seminars and receive regular feedback from their supervisors.

In addition, our Doctorate in Social Policy offers participation in the doctoral programme Social Problems and Social Welfare (PROWEL), which is conducted in English. PROWEL is a research-centred, interdisciplinary programme supporting our doctoral researchers in developing and completing their doctoral project and offering opportunities for national and international networking. As part of PROWEL doctoral researchers are invited to regularly present their research and receive feedback from their peers, professors and international and national experts in the field. In addition, doctoral researchers are encouraged and supported in presenting their research at national and international conferences. PROWEL does not offer bursaries or scholarships for doctoral researchers.

Professors who are eligible to supervise theses

• Prof. Géraldine Bugnon

Areas of specialisation:
– Juvenile justice and child protection systems
– Social work and criminal justice
– Judicialisation of social problems
– Alternative dispute resolution processes
– Sociology of law and justice
– Sociology of deviance and regulation
– Ethnography of the State

Theses can be supervised in French.

• Prof. Andreas Hadjar

Areas of specialisation:
– Inequalities along the axes of social origin, gender, migration
– Social structures in comparison: educational systems, welfare state regimes
– Education and status acquisition, life chances
– Subjective well-being
– Values, attitudes, political participation
– Youth: socialisation, violence, delinquency
– Quantitative methods, mixed-method designs, qualitative methods, longitudinal analyses, comparative methods/multilevel analyses

Theses can be supervised in German and English.

• Prof. Ingela Naumann

Areas of specialisation:
– International and comparative welfare state analysis (welfare regimes, gender regimes, social care regimes, historical development of welfare systems)
– Early childhood education and care, work/life reconciliation
– Gender and socio-economic inequalities
– Childhood and society
– Religion and social policy
– Multi-level governance, regional/local policy developments
– Comparative and qualitative methods; discourse analysis, historical institutionalism
– Applied social policy, public engagement and knowledge exchange

Theses can be supervised in German and English.