Welcome to the Department of Sociology!

The Department of Sociology at the University of Klagenfurt is recognised for both research and a commitment to teaching. Whether it is Max Weber’s profound influence on organisational theory or Karl Polanyi’s depiction of the relationship between the ‘social’ and the ‘economic’, the department covers a diverse range of topics that are central to understanding and explaining effects of social contexts on economic processes.

While the department has particularly close connections with economics and politics, it also maintains a distinctive profile as a centre of excellence for work in social/cultural theory and empirical sociological research. This specialisation draws on the multidisciplinary research agenda of socioeconomics and theories of socio-cultural embeddedness. It locates economic actions at the junction of shifting cultural meanings and social practices and regards businesses, markets, and individual consumer behaviour as embedded in and influenced by historical, socio-cultural, political, and economic forces.

The Department’s research focus lies on:

• Markets and Social Inequalities
• Work and Self-employment
• Sociology of Entrepreneurship
• Consumption and Consumer Culture
• History of Economic Thought and Sociology

In December 2012, the Department of Sociology launched a Discussion Paper series (ISSN 2306-7373) with publications in English and German. The list below provides links to the publications in reverse chronological order, i.e. the most recent paper appears at the top of the list.  You can also access the papers by visiting the Electronic Journals Library .

And finally, we supervise master theses in the master programme “Entrepreneurship”, and doctoral theses in the doctoral programme “Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Development” which strongly focus on the research subject in Sociology of Entrepreneurship. As the name suggests, this area is concerned with the development of markets, the establishment and operation of new businesses, entrepreneurs of different ages and genders, and questions of the creation of new knowledge for new services and products. Furthermore, the research concentrates on the forms and threats of economic development in an increasingly digital and global economic world. Students are expected to learn how to present research results in international reviewed journals during their doctoral studies.