Team
Doctoral candidates
Jessica Walberer
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
jessica.walberer@smail.th-koeln.de
Supervisor team:
Sigrid Leitner (University of Applied Sciences Cologne), Hansjörg Schmid (University of Fribourg), Matthias Otten (University of Applied Sciences Cologne)
Research project
My doctoral project examines the structural positioning of Muslim women's organizations within the non-statutory welfare sector in Germany. The focus is on experiences of recognition, cooperation, and exclusion, as well as on the power-related and discursive conditions under which Muslim women carry out social work. The aim is to disclose mechanisms of exclusion within the field of social welfare and to develop prospects for equal participation.
Danny Kröger
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
danny.kroeger@smail.th-koeln.de
Supervisor team:
Research project
Danny Kröger explores political actions carried out by base-level social workers (Basisfachkräfte) in Germany. In doing so, he reconstructs how these structure-related actions are implemented by base-level social workers and which external factors affect them. To this end, he conducts qualitative interviews with non-managerial professionals working in different organizational settings across four selected fields of social work.
Nadine Thome
University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE)
Supervisor team:
Simone Leiber (University of Duisburg-Essen), Sigrid Leitner (University of Applied Sciences Cologne), Holger Schoneville (University of Applied Sciences Duisburg-Essen)
Research project
In my doctoral thesis, I examine the practice of non-governmental social counseling in dealing with welfare state boundaries. The focus is on professional ambivalence, collective orientations, and implicit knowledge that shape the everyday actions of social workers.
Serafin Eilmes
Research project
In my dissertation project, I am examining how people in a neighborhood come together to represent their interests in a self-organized manner when dealing with landlords, the city, or welfare state institutions. Using ethnographic participant observation, I will place a particular focus on the role of emotions.
Lennart Hesse
Research project
More information about the doctoral project coming soon
Till Moellenbrink
Research project
More information about the doctoral project coming soon
Supervisors
Sigrid Leitner
supervisor and spokesperson
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
sigrid.leitner@th-koeln.de
Fields of research
(Comparative) Welfare State Reseach, Social Policy, Family Policy, Gender Politics, Social Work as a Political Actor
Fields of research
(Comparative) Welfare State Research, Social Policy, Long-term Care Policy, Social Work as Political Actor
Antonio Brettschneider
supervisor
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
antonio.brettschneider@th-koeln.de
Fields of research
(Comparative) Welfare State Research, Social policy, Pension Policy, Local Politics, Old-age Poverty, Social Inequalities
Fields of research
Social Inequality and Social Exclusion, Quantitative Methods, Mixed Methods, Social Policy, Pension Policy
(Photo by Frank Preuß)
Fields of research
Poverty and Social Exclusion, Welfare State Transformation, Social Work Theory, Qualitative Research in Social Work
Johannes Schütte
supervisor
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
johannes.schuette@th-koeln.de
Fields of research
Poverty and Social Exclusion, Child Poverty, Educational Inequalities, Local Politics, Evaluation Research
Associated members
Research project
More information about the doctoral project coming soon
Research project
More information about the doctoral project coming soon
Research project
My PhD-project follows political self-organizations in social work during the conception, organization, and implementation of political actions. The study aims to reconstruct knowledge and work processes while analyzing cross-textual organizational and institutional forms of the political in social work. It further investigates how ideas and discourses of the political are reproduced or transformed through political practice. The project draws on poststructuralist and radical democratic conceptions of politics and the political, as well as on feminist approaches. The research has the Institutional Ethnography as its methodological framework and introduces an iconographic, participatory mode of analysis.
Research project
In my PhD project, I focus on interest representation in German national youth politics. Adopting a discourse-analytical perspective, I take the 2021 reform of the 8th volume of the German Social Code (SGB VIII), which governs child and youth welfare, as an empirical case. I am particularly interested in the modes of collective interest representation employed by non-governmental actors and the ways in which these modes shape youth policy.
(Photo by Thomas Entzeroth)
Research project
In my PhD project, I examine governance structures between third-sector organizations and local government authorities, focusing on their co-creation of public service delivery for people with limited or no access to healthcare. Using a qualitative comparative research design, I investigate three federal states and analyze how co-creative processes are constituted and negotiated within different institutional and local contexts. The study employs Situational Analysis (Clarke et al., 2018) to explore the actors, discourses, power relations, and governance arrangements shaping these processes.
Research project
In my doctoral thesis, I examine the diverse political strategies of social workers operating in the social environment of Hamburg’s central train station. In between regulatory policies and social policy measures, a complex and ambivalent political situation emerges for social workers on all organizational levels. Using Adele E. Clarke’s situational analysis, I analyze qualitative interviews as well as relevant documents.
Research project
My doctoral thesis examines the role of strategically integrated social planning in German local authorities as a means of representing the interests of marginalised groups within the welfare state. I understand social planning in this context as a municipal steering force that works towards creating living conditions in the municipality that are as equitable as possible, in the spirit of public services. Following Paul Davidoff, I conceive of social planning here as ‘Advocacy Social Planning’: ‘The right course of action is always a matter of choice, never of fact’.
Research project
Between Status Loss and Repositioning: Participation Processes of Afghan Women in the German Migration Context
My PhD project explores how Afghan women who have migrated to Germany since 2021 negotiate participation, belonging, and social recognition following forced displacement.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, including narrative-biographical interviews and participant observation, the project examines how experiences of migration can reshape social positions and everyday lives.
Rather than viewing participation as a fixed outcome, the project considers it to be an ongoing process that unfolds within changing institutional, social, and cultural contexts.
Particular attention is paid to the intersection of gender, migration, and social inequality, as well as the strategies through which women navigate these conditions and establish new avenues for agency and social participation.
Research project
My research focuses on non‑EU citizens and their (potential) transition into vocational education and training in Germany. Drawing on a social inequality perspective, I analyze the conditions under which this specific form of migration is produced, the transnational educational space that emerges in the process, and the (im)possibilities it creates for the young people involved. Situated in social work, the project addresses the transnational social question by examining how these dynamics shape both access to opportunity and new forms of marginalization for underprivileged youth.
Philipp Günther
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
Research project
More information about the doctoral project coming soon
Additional contributors
Ute Klammer
University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE)
Fields of research
Daniela Schweigler
University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE)
Fields of research
Carsten Ullrich
University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE)
Fields of research
Matthias Otten
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
Fields of research
International Social Work, Migration Research, Disability Studies, Reconstructive Social Research
Carsten Schröder
University of Applied Sciences Cologne (THK)
Fields of research
Hansjörg Schmid
University of Fribourg
Fields of research
Islam and Social Work,
Participation of Muslim Organisations in the Welfare State, Islamic
Social Ethics
Lars Schmitt
University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf
Fields of research
Rebecca Mörgen
University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE)
Fields of research
Silke Tophoven
University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf
Fields of research
work and health, vocational rehabilitation, gender and labour market, children and youth in poverty, social policy
Student Assistants
Fields of research
Scientific coordinator
Research project
My research focuses on the relationship between social work professionals and social work organizations. I am particularly interested in how organizations shape their members and, in turn, are shaped by them. I also examine working conditions in the field of social work and explore how the fragmentation and privatization of the organizational landscape affect the profession.