New Senior Coordinator of the Dean´s Office: Jessica Maczuga more

Christian Peters, Managing Director of BIGSSS , conducted workshops in Sri Lanka on internationalization strategies and AI's impact on higher education. more

BIGSSS welcomes its third DAAD Scholarship Programe on "Contentious Politics in the Digital Age" (2025-2029) more

On June 13th, BIGSSS Fellow Aya Alwais delivered a compelling talk in Essen to an audience of 120 Syrian students during the launch of the “Syrian Students Union in Germany”. more

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:

Academic Program

Doctoral training at BIGSSS follows the principles of demand-tailored education, close supervision, progress monitoring and effective funding.

For more information on our PhD programs, please take a look at our Academic Program. For a quick overview, you can also download the Program Flyer.

Admissions

Are you interested in becoming a BIGSSS fellow? Find all information on our different programs here: