Why study Sociology in Dresden?
In addition to the quality of its teaching, Dresden as a city is a particularly exciting place to experience sociological reflection and thinking, and to train it on a daily basis.
In recent years in particular, Dresden has become a city of visible contrasts. Dresden is a microcosm in which the manifold fragmentation of society is evident: Deindustrialisation and Industry 4.0, ageing population and birth boom, urban redevelopment and gentrification, urban reconstructivism and architectural modernity, openness and xenophobia, positive experiences after the fall of the Berlin Wall and East-West conflicts.
Dresden has a very interesting urban and cultural history development. It goes back about 800 years and has left architectural traces from the cultural heydays (e.g. baroque buildings), the last great destruction on 13th February 1945, the socialist post-war modernism ('East modernism') and the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (reconstruction of the Frauenkirche, redesign of Prager Straße). There is hardly any other major German city at the moment with as many building activities and as much controversy about it.
At the same time, in Dresden as the state capital of Saxony, the more recent, German historical developments of the political transformation of 1989/90 are still having a very intensive effect. Dresden has become more or less a city society in which the contrasts between the positive economic development and the intensive reconstruction work of the last twenty-five years and the right-wing populist and anti-democratic movement Pegida, which has been publicly appearing in Dresden since 2015, are clearly visible, as if in a laboratory situation.
This situation requires a high degree of local sociological expertise and also has an impact on the topics of the Institute of Sociology in teaching and research. Therefore, there are numerous projects that enable students to engage intensively with current local and global developments within the framework of their courses and beyond, and, if they wish, to participate in publications.