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M.A. Sociology - European Societies

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Specialties of the master program: research orientation

The Institute of Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin is a small and highly specialized institute that places great emphasis on the quality of teaching and research. It offers only a Master’s program and accepts only about 70 students per year. This ensures small seminar groups and excellent mentoring.

The aim of the program is to provide you with the knowledge and skills necessary to conduct independent sociological research, and comparative empirical research in particular.


To achieve this, basic and advanced tools – both theoretical and methodological – are introduced in the first semester and mastered in the following ones. In the second semester these tools are applied to specific topics, such as social structure and culture.

You also will be made familiar with survey data sets useful for the comparative analysis of European societies. This includes learning to use these data for your own empirical analyses.

In the third semester you will conduct your own empirical research project under intense supervision, starting from the definition of a research question and ending with a complete written research report. This provides you with enough experience and practical knowledge of social scientific research for conducting another research project for your Master’s thesis.