In Sociology, societal challenges are often phrased as societal problems. Most of these societal problems are related to the question of how we can deliver certain public goods. We generally assume that people value important public goods such as clean air and drinking water, democracy, law and order, equal opportunities, and want to avoid public bads. However, we are currently in the challenging situation where some politicians and a substantial number of citizens seem to contest that some of these ‘goods’ are indeed ‘public goods’. Ignoring or mitigating climate change is an example. Similarly, the public good of ‘living in a democracy’ was long taken for granted until recently, yet the increasing popularity of populist right-wing parties like the AfD, Putin’s hybrid war and Trump’s recent blitz to expand his power, suggests that our democracy is threatened. These are challenging problems. Furthermore, it is important to realize that societal challenges are often interconnected and I will illustrate this while trying to answer the question whether we can expect an increase of immigration in Europe.
To answer questions related to societal problems, rigorous sociological research is required. The availability of high-quality data in our sociological toolbox, and an adequate linking of sociological questions to appropriate data and methods is crucial. In my view sociology as a discipline has made big steps both in data quality and variety of data. This has improved the quality of sociological research substantially. High quality longitudinal datasets, geodata, combining social science and molecular genetic data, experiments within surveys, and increasing availability of full register data, offer unique opportunities to better answer research questions related to societal problems. I will provide several examples and some of them are related to immigration and social integration.

Prof. Nan Dirk de Graaf is an Official Fellow in Sociology and a Professor in Sociology at Nuffield College, Oxford. His research interests are: social stratification, especially educational attainment and consequences of social mobility, cultural sociology, sociology of religion, pro-social behaviour, and political sociology. He obtained his PhD at Utrecht University (1988) and was a post-doc researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Education and Human Development in Berlin (1988-1989). He was a research fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy (1990-1995) and a full Professor in Sociology at Nijmegen University (2001-2007) and the chair of the Inter-university Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS: 2003-2007). Recent books: Handbook of Sociological Science: Contributions to Rigorous Sociology (Edward Elgar; co-edited with Klarita Gërxhani and Werner Raub) and the textbook Societal Problems as Public Bads (Routledge; co-author Dingeman Wiertz).
More information: https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/nan-dirk-de-graaf/

This talk reviews recent advances in causal inference, focusing on uncovering treatment effect heterogeneity. Uncovering sources of effect heterogeneity is key for understanding the implications of the distribution of scarce resources, effectively assigning treatments to maximize average outcomes, and generalizing to populations beyond those under study. The talk focusses on propensity and covariate-based partitioning strategies and tree-based methods for assessing effect heterogeneity. To demonstrate methods for assessing effect heterogeneity, I draw on an empirical application of estimating the heterogeneous effects of completing a four-year college degree in the U.S. on reducing socioeconomic disadvantage over the career.

Prof. Jennie E. Brand is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Professor of Statistics and Data Science (by courtesy), and Co-Director of the Center for Social Statistics (CSS) at UCLA. She is the past President of the Association of Population Centers and, beginning in August 2025, the President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28). Prof. Brand studies social stratification and inequality, mobility, social demography, education, and methods for causal inference. Her current research agenda encompasses three main areas: access to and the impact of higher education; the socioeconomic and social-psychological consequences of disruptive events, such as job displacement; and causal inference and the application and innovation of quantitative methods for panel data. Recent work explores causal inference and machine learning for the social sciences.
More information: http://www.profjenniebrand.com/

This panel will discuss the potential and current relevance of sociological research for evidence-based policy advice. What criteria and standards must social research meet in order to serve as a basis for policy recommendations? What are the prerequisites for evidence-based results to be heard politically and incorporated into political decision-making processes? What are the obstacles to communicating and transferring scientific findings into policy? Why is the transfer more successful in some fields than in others? How do political decision-makers perceive the contribution of sociology to solving practical problems? These questions will be explored using the examples of two highly relevant fields of society, namely the education system and the labor market, and the challenges posed for these fields by contemporary migration processes. The panel will represent the perspectives of science, politics, and policy advice in the fields mentioned above.

The panel discussion will be held in German. This panel is hosted by JGU research unit IPP (Interdisciplinary Public Policy).

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Prof. Dr. Marita Jacob is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne. Her research focuses on social inequalities in education, employment, and family life. She is particularly interested in how family background, gender, and ethnic origin influence educational decisions, how gender inequalities in the labor market relate to family dynamics, and most recently, how barriers to higher education access can be reduced through interventions such as counseling programs.

Her recent project on guidance counseling was conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia. The project involved a large-scale field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of a counseling program offered by universities (both traditional and universities of applied sciences). The research findings directly informed policy recommendations and contributed to the program’s expansion to currently 27 universities throughout North Rhine-Westphalia.

In addition to research and teaching, the “third mission” of universities is becoming increasingly important, namely the transfer of scientific knowledge to the public. Traditionally, the mass media act as a filter that reports on small parts of a field’s scientific output. With the help of social media, such as podcasts, blogs, or short messaging services, some contemporary scientists are beginning to reach a wider audience directly. This panel will discuss how sociology compares with other disciplines when it comes to transferring its findings to the public. How do journalists decide which disciplines to refer to in their science reporting, especially when it comes to subjects that are investigated by several disciplines, for example education, labor, family, migration, or the environment? To what extent, and why, is sociology perceived in German quality media as subject matter for the “feuilleton” (i.e., the culture section) rather than the science section? How should scientific findings be communicated to arouse interest in the media and its consumers? How is the public perception and impact of science changing due to the trend towards unfiltered “open access” to research output? What challenges arise from the fact that scientific findings may contradict each other, meet scientific quality criteria to varying degrees, and increasingly compete with content generated by AI?

The panel discussion will be held in German.

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Prof. Dr. Holger Lengfeld is Full Professor of Sociology, Institutions, and Social Change at Leipzig University and a senior researcher at the government-funded Research Institute for Social Cohesion (RISC). His research focuses on political sociology, social cohesion, and inequality. Most recently, he led a research team on ethnic discrimination in German public authorities. His professional passion lies in communicating sociological findings to the public.

For sociology and sociologists, scientific journals have only continued to grow in importance in recent decades. The process of double-blind peer review is designed to ensure scientific quality standards, and publishing in international peer-reviewed journals is considered crucial for career advancement in academia.

With the digitalization of publishing and the rise of the open science movement, open access (OA) publications have also gained in importance. Many research funding organizations now require research projects to publish their results OA. In addition, research has shown that OA publications have a higher impact. As a result, scholarly publishing is undergoing a transition to OA. More and more journals are making all their articles OA, which is called Gold Open Access (GOA) – entirely free for readers, but with potential costs for authors.

In the past, articles were published behind a paywall and could only be accessed if readers paid a subscription fee. Now, many journals publish their articles openly, but the authors themselves have to pay an article processing charge (APC). There is an ongoing process of concentration by which journals are increasingly becoming part of the portfolios of a small number of large publishers, increasing the power of the publishers. This has resulted in – among other things – quite substantial APCs, often four figure sums.

In Germany, after lengthy negotiations, the long-standing subscription model has recently been replaced by the DEAL agreement between several major publishers (Springer Nature, Wiley and Elsevier) and an alliance of German scientific organizations. Universities and other institutions which have signed up to DEAL provide researchers with free access to the full texts of a large number of journals. The APCs are passed on to the universities and, in some cases, to the researchers as the authors of the publications. Thus, the status quo is that scientists edit, review, and write articles for free. Then, depending on their university’s policy, they may have to pay the frequently high APCs if their articles are published. At the same time, the publishers make a profit.

This situation has led to increasing calls for researchers to work with libraries and non-commercial publishers to operate journals with Diamond Open Access (DOA) themselves: Going even further than GOA, this model involves articles being published, distributed, and preserved with no fees for either readers or authors.

These developments give rise to numerous pressing questions: How successful and fair are the DEAL contracts and what future do they have? How precarious is the situation for journals which are neither DEAL members nor OA? How does sociology compare with other disciplines in terms of its publication models? What are the prospects and hurdles facing those established subscription or hybrid journals which are committed to transitioning to DOA? What are the challenges and advantages of newly founded DOA journals? What do you need to bear in mind if you want to set up such a journal?

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Prof. Dr. Josef Brüderl holds the Chair for Quantitative Inequality and Family Research at the Institute for Sociology at LMU Munich. He has launched an initiative for publishing in open access journals and for founding journals with Diamond Open Access.