Former BIGSSS Dean Steffen Mau awared with Leibniz Award 2021 › view all

Steffen Mau, the long-time dean of BIGSSS, is among the 10 recipients of the Leibniz Award 2021. The German Research Foundation (DFG) made the announcement on December 10. In doing so, it honors the awardee’s “innovative sociological analyses of the diverse social transformations that characterize our present."

From 2003 to 2015, Mau worked as a sociologist at the University of Bremen, first in a junior professorship at the Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS), then as Professor of Political Sociology and Comparative Social Research and Dean of BIGSSS. Since 2015, he holds the Professorship of Macrosociology at Humboldt University Berlin.

Today, he is one of the most influential German sociologists and the only humanities and social science scholar among the honorees of 2021. In his most recent publication "Lütten Klein” he describes the social and political fractures of East Germany with a differentiated and unbiased view of their origins in the GDR. Along with his 2017 analysis about the extensive quantification and numerical fetishization of the social (“Das metrische Wir”), Mau has provided decisive impulses to the contemporary social science public debate in Germany.

Steffen Mau remains closely connected to his Bremen roots: "I am delighted to receive this important award.", he told us. "On the long run, my 11 years of working at  BIGSSS in Bremen have certainly been supportive for this." According to Patrick Sachweh, who took over as BIGSSS’ Dean on Dec. 1, this appreciation is based on absolute reciprocity: "BIGSSS is highly delighted about the decision of the German Research Foundation (DFG) to award the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize to our founding dean, Steffen Mau. The granting of this prestigious research award represents a major recognition for a style of sociological analysis that combines analytical ambition and methodological diversity with public relevance, written in accessible prose. We are looking forward to reading many more topical and timely studies of major social transformations, which this award will surely facilitate during the next years".

Click here to read the announcement of the Humboldt University Berlin.

Click here for the DFG announcement.

Photo: Marten Körner.