Welcome to BIGSSS!

The Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) is one of Germany’s leading schools of doctoral training in the social sciences. Having started with just a handful of fellows in 2002, our school hosts more than 70 international PhD fellows today. So, if you are a member of this growing BIGSSS community: good to see you! Should you 'meet' us for the very first time: we hope that this website will help you in getting to know more about both BIGSSS and its academic mission.

Our PhD program, in a nutshell, provides close supervision of dissertation work accompanied by demand-tailored education. Working at BIGSSS means to be embedded in a vibrant research landscape: our supporting institutions located at the public University of Bremen and the private Constructor University Bremen provide us with the means to support our fellows academically, financially and logistically. Moreover, BIGSSS is part of an international network of strong graduate programs.

Our educational concept, combining the strengths of the Bremen social scientific landscape with an innovative qualification program and supervision strategy, was acknowledged twice by an international board of reviewers in the German Excellence Initiative in 2007 and 2012 respectively and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation COFUND Program.

For more impressions view our film about Life at BIGSSS: