Graduate School GSBC

The Jena Graduate School "Human Behaviour in Social and Economic Change" (GSBC) hosted by the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU Jena), is an interdisciplinary doctoral school, aiming at providing the best research environment for doctoral and post-doctoral candidates.

We hope the following pages will provide you with all necessary information and raise your curiosity concerning our institution and its research and study programme.

If you have any questions or comments regarding our Jena Graduate School, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.

Students at the Campus

About the Graduate School

The Jena Graduate School Human Behaviour in Social and Economic Change is a university institution located at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. The GSBC is designed to band together graduate activities in humanities sciences at the University of Jena. Thus, it is a joint initiative of leading scholars of the two faculties:

The major contributing disciplines are

Applied Ethics
Economics
Law
Psychology
Sociology.

All of these disciplines aim at analyzing how humans behave if they face change in its very facets but by examining different aspects and levels of analysis, ranging from the individual, the social group and organisation to the social and economic system, with an emphasis on the initiation of, and the adaptation to change.

The general objectives of the Graduate School are education to excellence and the stimulation of outstanding research by providing a framework for doctoral programmes in the social sciences with common standards at a top-quality international level. Programmes of each of the participating disciplines are opened, and interdisciplinarity is further strengthened by a the study- and research programme GSBC_SEC.

Woman with book

General objectives

The general objectives of the GSBC are education to excellence and the stimulation of outstanding research along the following lines:

The GSBC-programme is designed to integrate fellows into a strong research environment and to connect them to cutting edge research.
Intensive supervision goes hand in hand with a strengthening of early scientific independence and integration in the international scientific community.
The school stimulates outstanding research addressing individual, economic, and social change. It strengthens interdisciplinary study, going beyond constraining perspectives of each of the contributing disciplines. It provides a platform for the manifold relationships between the four disciplines involved and promotes their communication, cooperation, and alignment.
The school aims at training and promoting early stage scientists well-equipped to help analyse and to master societal change. As researchers or professionals, their expertise will allow them to design improved policy measures for managing and coping with processes of change, to prepare better strategies in business, and to contribute significantly to the research performance of universities and research institutes.

Collaborative Doctoral Training

GSBC draws upon established and recommended doctoral training. The programmes at these institutes share common standards with respect to excellence and internationality. Although the disciplinary orientation is already complemented by an interdisciplinary dimension within these programmes, it is accentuated through the GSBC

by allowing the doctoral students to combine certain elements of the existing programmes and
by establishing a new, additional doctoral programme dedicated to research questions of the four disciplines of GSBC that have thus far not been dealt with at the more disciplinary institutes.