Political and Cultural Change (CULT)

The scientific team of the department builds on expertise from various disciplines, such as human geography, social anthropology, sociology, political sciences, history, development studies, as well as on law and planning. While research themes and regions vary because they depend on the current composition of researchers and ongoing projects, our empirical work is characterized by interdisciplinary social science research carried out at various scales. We usually focus on the local scale where we use mainly qualitative studies and complement them with quantitative methods.
Our department hosts the head office of the Right Livelihood College.
Department Competencies
Institutions
Institutions can be singled out as an important reason why certain societies follow particular trajectories or why so many development policies
Knowledge
Many governments put the creation of ‘knowledge-based economies’ or ‘knowledge societies’ on the top of their political agenda.
Social and Cultural Change and Adaptation
ZEF studies ‘social and cultural change’ as part of larger, socio-economic, and environmental change processes such as climate change and in close connection to ZEF's research