Research Center for Transnational Social Support creates sustainable structures for research into social support across national borders
04.02.2015
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has been working in partnership with the University of Hildesheim over the past seven years to establish a new research field focusing on transnational processes in social support. This topic will grow in importance in the future as it becomes necessary to face up to the challenges of an increasingly globalized world. "Social support is no longer provided merely though national structures, as the current concerns relating to refugee policies illustrate," said Professor Cornelia Schweppe of Mainz University.
It was against this background that the two partner institutions in Mainz and Hildesheim decided to take a next step in their work in this field, in which they have already been collaborating for many years within the Research Training Group "Transnational Social Support," funded by the German Research Foundation. The newly established "Research Center for Transnational Social Support – TRANSSOS" puts in place sustainable structures that will enable long-term research of the subject. TRANSSOS brings together research, the advancement of young scholars, and academic communication under one roof. It also provides an international publication forum in the form of the peer-reviewed Transnational Social Review − A Social Work Journal, which has been published since 2014 by Routledge.
The main purpose of TRANSSOS is to extend research in the field of transnational social support. For this seven working groups are set up that will deal with topics such as aging and youth, the history of social support, and transnational social policies. The projects will be supplemented by regular conferences and events such as lecture series.
TRANSSOS is based at the Institute of Education at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Institute for Social and Organizational Education at the University of Hildesheim. The coordinators are Professor Cornelia Schweppe in Mainz and Professor Wolfgang Schröer in Hildesheim. Project manager in Mainz is Dr. Claudia Olivier.