Projects

The project TEACH-AI (Teacher Education for AI and Climate Harmony) contributes to a transatlantic collaboration between the University of Bremen and the University of California – Irvine, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and climate change education in pre-service teacher education at the university level. The United States has recently advanced national priorities for AI education through executive orders and the establishment of a task force to strengthen AI education. Despite rising interest, climate change education in the United States remains limited and largely confined to science electives. On the other hand, Germany has long institutionalized Geography and Environmental Science Education within ist school curriculum and in teacher preparation programs. This project leverages the complementary strengths of these two contexts – U.S. innovation and policy momentum in AI education, and Germany's strong foundation in Education for Sustainable Development, including environmental education – to design a transatlantic course that integrates AI literacy into Geography and Environmental Science Education, with a particular emphasis on climate change topics for pre-service teachers.

As pre-service teachers are important multipliers for AI literacy, embedding AI in a subject-specific way fosters a critical yet open stance for their teaching practice. One significant concern with the rapid growth of AI tools is their prevalent use to merely automate existing educational practices rather than to leverage their potential to reimagine teaching and learning through human-centered approaches. Their uncritical integration risks dehumanizing learning, standardizing thinking, and inhibiting students' creativity and critical thinking skills. Through a curriculum analysis, survey, and jointly designed modules for a course piloted at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Bremen, this multi-case study project advances AI literacy and sustainable use of AI to prepare teachers to respond to ecological challenges within Geography and Environmental Science Education. The findings  ft he project TEACH-AI can inform how we can improve future teacher preparedness to address misinformation, data ethics, and sustainability through AI-supported pedagogy.

This project centers Germany as an important and understudied place in African American intellectual history. In Germany, where silence around racism coexists with Black intellectual revelation, Black thinkers have historically confronted and reimagined European colonial and racial narratives. Germany's role in Black internationalism is little known, but also evident in the lives and works of people like W.E.B. Du Bois, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis. The project, situated in Berlin, offers a diasporic take on German memory politics, exploring contested geographies of race, empire, and freedom.

This Foundation for German-American Academic Relations (SDAW)-funded project asks three main questions: first, how did African American intellectual engagements in Germany inform and influence new interpretations of empire, race, and colonialism? Second, what do people's recorded stories and other primary sources from archives in Berlin tell us about exchanges between African American thinkers and Afro-German communities? And third, how does decolonial Africana knowledge inform memory, identity, and political resistance in Germany's memory culture?

What makes this project unique is that it inaugurates a German axis in Black transatlantic intellectual history. In this framing, Germany serves not as a backdrop, but as a deliberative site of Black philosophical and political invention. In Germany, scholars like Alexander Ghedi Weheliye and Fatima El-Tayeb have shaped the field of Black Studies. Historical figures like William Pickens have promoted Black internationalism and anti-imperialism, influencing early Frankfurt School theorists and Weimar Republic politicians. Through interactions between African American and Afro-German scholars, this project exposes how Germany's colonial amnesia—the selective forgetting of its colonial past—and memory politics have influenced, and been influenced by, African American thought. The project also demonstrates how connections between racism and colonialism were both elucidated and challenged in the minds of African Americans who came to Germany.

Dr. K. Bailey Thomas, Eleanor M. Carlson Visiting Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island in the United States, and Dr. Helen A. Gibson, research fellow in the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies’ department of history at Freie Universität Berlin, are the project's principal investigators. In the first phase of the project in the spring of 2026, project participants will discuss important works from W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk and Audre Lorde’' Zami, Autobiography to Jennifer L. Morgan’s Reckoning with Slavery and Christina Sharpe's In the Wake. During this phase of the project, they will further develop their research trajectories.

In the fall of 2026, Dr. Thomas and Dr. Gibson will host a three-day workshop at Freie Universität Berlin. The workshop will entail presentations by early-career scholars, dialogue with Afro-German intellectuals and public historians, a public-facing part of the workshop to bring together scholarly and community discourses, and a collaborative writing session aimed at preparing a joint publication. Dr. Thomas and Dr. Gibson are profoundly grateful for this opportunity to strengthen ties between scholars of Black critical theory in Germany and the United States.

The aim of the project was to bring together experts from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss a key challenge facing democracies in the Americas, Europe, and beyond. To do so, an international workshop was organized at the University of Illinois Chicago, which brought together scholars based in Germany and the US as well as Brazil. The group jointly assessed the state of academic research on the targeted violence against public figures, discussed ongoing studies on the killing of social activists, politicians, and journalists, and identified overall pathways and challenges for establishing a joint research agenda on violence against public figures in democracies. Key contributions and findings from the workshop have been compiled and submitted in a joint forum manuscript to an international peer-reviewed journal. In addition, the workshop facilitated the consolidation and submission of a joint research proposal by the two organizers, which – in case of success – will enable a collaborative, US-German research project.

The international workshop "Violence Against Public Figures in Contemporary Democracies" took place on 1 March 2025 at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), right before the start of the 2025 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA) in the same city to facilitate the physical presence of participants. The workshop was organized by the applicants, Juan Albarracín (UIC) and Jonas Wolff (PRIF), with logistical support by Rodrigo Moura Karolczak (UIC). The workshop consisted in eight brief presentations, based on papers that were circulated and read before, followed by a prepared comment and a joint discussion, as well as final discussion and breaks, including for lunch and dinner, for networking purposes.

To kick things off, the organizers Juan Albarracín and Jonas Wolff presented a paper aimed at setting the stage for an integrated research agenda on the killing of public figures. The following presentations analyzed the impact of political killings on political participation in Colombia (Ana Arjona, Northwestern University, online), the justification of violence, analyzing subversive stigma and citizen attitudes towards lethal violence in Colombia (Isabel Güiza-Gómez and Abby Cordova, University of Notre Dame), and political violence against subnational elected officials in the US (Alexandra Filindra, UIC). Further presentations dealt with journalist killings in democracies (Bonky Lim and Amanda Murdie, University of Georgia), lethal violence against Catholic priests in Mexico (Laura López-Pérez and Guillermo Trejo, University of Notre Dame, and Natán Skigin, Harvard University), violence against politicians in Brazil (Huri Paz, CEBRAP, São Paulo), and the relationship between violence against public figures and criminal violence in Central America (Laura Blume, University of Nevada). Discussants included Elif Baba, Laura Barrios Sabogal, Nacho Borba, Andreas Feldmann, Ángela Hernández, and Matthew Krain.

The workshop covered the different types of public figures that are confronted with targeted violence, ranging from politicians, journalists and social activists to groups that are so far hardly studied as targets of violence (such as religious leaders or judges). It also brought together studies on democracies in the Global South (such as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua) with research on the Global North (such as the US) as well as global comparative studies. The workshop also succeeded in stimulating fruitful scholarly dialog across country cases and subdisciplinary divides, e.g., between International Relations and Comparative Politics, human rights research and criminal governance scholarship, as well as qualitative area study perspectives and cross-national large-N research. In stimulating rich discussions, generating overarching insights and raising important general questions for future research, the workshop thereby made an important contribution towards integrating a still rather fragmented research field.

The first stated aim of the project was to facilitate the preparation of a joint publication. More specifically, the applicants decided to prepare a joint forum contribution for an international, peer-reviewed journal. As a follow-up to the March workshop, the applicants organized an authors’ workshop in June 2025 (online) to discuss revised contributions. Furthermore, SDAW funding allowed for an additional research visit of Juan Albarracín to Frankfurt in September 2025, during which the applicants finalized the manuscript. In October 2025, the manuscript was submitted.

With a view to the second promised outcome of the project, the Chicago workshop also facilitated the consolidation and submission of a joint research proposal by the two organizers. In case of success, this will enable a sustained, collaborative, US-German research project on the topic at hand.

The project investigated current and future trends in the question of burden-sharing, a perennial issue of conflict in the transatlantic alliance that has frequently escalated over the past 70 years. Particularly since Donald Trump became president, burden-sharing once more became one of the most serious issues in US-European relations, as evidenced by intense debates prior to the Hague NATO summit of 2025 which resulted in a pledge by almost all NATO members to spend 5% of their GDP on defense. However, as before, it remained contested what constitutes a fair share and whether there is still ca common idea of the 'burden'. To analyse these issues, the project brought together eight leading and younger scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, including an analyst from a leading German think-tank. 

On June 12/13 a workshop was held at the University of Marburg during which the participants presented and discussed draft papers. These examined topics such as: 

• the future of military assistance to Ukraine and burden-sharing in post-war reconstruction
• the question of equitable burden-sharing in NATO
• burden-sharing of containment of China
• the domestic dynamics of burden-sharing debates in Europe and the United States.

Prior to the workshop, the convenors had already contacted the editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Transatlantic Studies regarding the possibility to publish a special issue on transatlantic burden sharing. The journal expressed strong interest in such an issue and invited the convenors to present a detailed proposal. This proposal is being prepared until the end of July. It includes an introduction to the volume and revised abstracts of the proposed articles. Publication is expected in 2026.

Overall, the workshop provided an excellent chance to bring together scholars of burden-sharing which had often known each other only from their publications. It was decided to plan for a follow-up meeting, possibly in the US, and to also broaden the network to include Asian and other European scholars of burden-sharing.

The interdisciplinary workshop on Ukrainian refugee migration following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 provided a transatlantic perspective on the experiences of Ukrainian refugees in the U.S. and Germany. It addressed issues of social integration in both countries, the perceived privileged treatment of Ukrainian refugees compared to other refugees in both Germany and the U.S., as well as questions of a possible return migration, or access to the labor market. Grit Grigoleit-Richter (University of Passau) and Claudia Sadowski-Smith (Arizona State University) co-organized the two-day hybrid event on June 28 and 29, 2024 at the Professorship of American Studies, University of Passau.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, more than 6 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded in Europe. Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic were the main EU countries receiving Ukrainians under temporary protection schemes. In addition, about 500,000 Ukrainians arrived in the U.S. with a variety of legal status.

With SDAW funding, Grit Grigoleit-Richter (University of Passau) and Claudia Sadowski-Smith (Arizona State University) organized an interdisciplinary workshop on war-induced Ukrainian migrations to Germany and the United States at the University of Passau on June 28 and 29, 2024. In a hybrid setting, it provided a transatlantic dialogue on the different social, political, and legal contexts in which Ukrainians are admitted and integrate. Germany implemented an EU-wide framework, the Temporary Protection Directive, for Ukrainian refugees that allows for immediate access to essential services, assistance through employment agencies, and a work permit for an initial period of three years. Similarly, the U.S. has initiated temporary government resettlement programs, including sponsorship programs that allow Ukrainians to enter the country legally and apply for employment authorization. Although Ukrainians are able to enter and remain legally in both countries, they lack a path to permanent legal status, which hinders full integration and raises questions about long-term prospects. Various papers addressed these issues in regard to labor market integration, return migration, or practices of motherhood.

The workshop featured three keynotes that provided a larger contextual framework for Ukrainian migration. The first keynote, by historian Jannis Panagiotidis (University of Vienna, Austria), placed contemporary Ukrainian migration in a longer historical context of post-Soviet migration within Germany. Panagiotidis reflected on the notion that Ukrainian refugees received preferential treatment compared to other refugee groups because of their cultural proximity. Placed in a larger historical context, however, the reception of Ukrainians was novel and unexpected since East-European migrants in general were often excluded and not welcomed. The second keynote by Miriam Finkelstein from Slavic Studies at the University of Konstanz, Germany, focused on representations of Ukrainians in U.S. and German literary work. Long neglected, a fundamental shift in 2014 brought the experiences of Ukrainian women migrants in particular to light and gave them a voice. The final keynote by Halyna Lemekh from Sociology and Criminal Justice at St. Francis College, New York, USA, discussed the role of the Ukrainian diaspora within the U.S. Situated in New York, a large ethnic enclave has developed over time, assisting the newly arriving Ukrainians.

Several speakers ranging from the fields of education, cultural studies, law, sociology, and political science grouped thematically into three panels, provided insights into their research. Topics discussed included international student mobility (Ezenwa Olumba), when Nigerian students in Ukraine were denied admission to Poland in February 2022; the return intentions of Ukrainian mothers (Jonna Rock); the perspectives of displaced Ukrainian mothers in eastern and western German states (Elen Fübbeker); integration practices by municipal governments in several German cities (Nora Ratzmann and Denis Zeković); Ukrainian refugees' return intentions (Neonila Glukhodid); Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism use among Ukrainian refugees in Germany (Vladislava Warditz); the legal framework on the right to work for Ukrainian refugees in the U.S. and Germany (Janine Prantl) and on the emerging community of Ukrainians in Phoenix, Arizona, and their experiences of downward social mobility and initial integration processes.

The evolving discussions not only allowed for a larger transatlantic comparison but also provided a relevant case for the creation and potential success of refugee policies on a global scale.

Creating transatlantic knowledge transfer regarding place-based visa and their effects on rural development will address academic research gaps and provide policy recommendations in Europe and North America. A workshop will result in the publication of a special issue in a peer-reviewed international journal, a policy brief with and launch a more extensive research collaboration on labor immigration policies for shrinking, rural towns by preparing a research proposal.

At the beginning of May 2024, Sabine Mokry, postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, Sean Yom, associate professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Alexander Graef, research assistant at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, will hold a workshop on the role of social actors in the foreign policy of authoritarian states. The results of the workshop will be published as a special issue in a political science journal. Recommendations for dealing with authoritarian states will also be developed.

The workshop will examine the complex dynamics between autocratic states and social actors, and how the latter shape the former's foreign relations. By engaging with the literature on comparative authoritarianism, foreign policy analysis, and different regional traditions, we reject the still-prevalent assumption that autocratic rulers shape their foreign policy without regard to domestic political structures, constraints, and interests. We aim to deepen our theoretical understanding of how domestic political forces shape the foreign policy of authoritarian rulers, particularly in different types of regimes and regional contexts.

We therefore want to explore how social actors (including the general public, non-governmental organisations, media organisations, experts, lobbyists and other interest groups) can influence how authoritarian regimes shape their foreign relations, their choice of alliances, the conduct of conflicts, their integration into regional orders and other foreign policy issues through the configuration of domestic political structures. Participants in the workshop will be foreign policy experts from Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, Venezuela, and sub-Saharan African countries. Two discussants will help us gain comparative insights. We intend to submit the contributions as a special issue to a foreign policy journal such as Foreign Policy Analysis, The British Journal of International Relations and Politics, or International Politics after the workshop has concluded.

The workshop on 'Challenges of the Machine' took place from 24 to 25 May 2024 at TU Darmstadt. It brought together 12 professors and young researchers from New York University and Darmstadt Technical University to discuss the history of ideas, science and technology in human-machine relations in the 20th and 21st centuries in the form of a transatlantic and interdisciplinary forum. The workshop focused in particular on the exchange of perspectives from German-speaking and North American research communities in order to innovatively examine the nationally specific historical development of artificial intelligence, automation in factories and offices, engineering psychology (human factors engineering) and human-computer interaction.

The workshop's insights came from bringing together two scientific research areas that complement each other really well: German science and technology history, with its focus on technical anthropology, represented by Martina Heßler and Kevin Liggieri, and New York history of ideas and science, represented by Leif Weatherby, which emphasises the intertwining of discursive and technical developments. In terms of content, the workshop focused on the challenges of a historical reappraisal of technical (post-)modernity. In the form of concrete, detailed work on manuscripts sent out in advance, content-related and methodological questions about the historical interplay between technological development and transatlantic debates were addressed. The topics ranged from the prehistory of computer-mediated communication in industrial research in the early 20th century to the rise and fall of digital ‘expert systems’ to the emotional history of real-time systems at SAP. Each participant was given one hour to discuss their submitted draft.

As the oral presentation of the submitted theses lasted no longer than 10 minutes, all participants received extremely specific and helpful feedback. The detailed feedback and targeted comments enabled problems to be examined more clearly and, at the same time, prepared for later publication. This form of workshop also allowed previously overlooked connections in the projects presented to be uncovered and explored.

In terms of content and methodology, the workshop was able to build on research in social history, the history of science and technology, anthropology and the history of concepts, and took up important ideas from recent research on racism and gender as well as industrial sociology. By bringing together nine early-career researchers and three professors, the workshop marked the beginning of a collaboration between New York University and Darmstadt Technical University to promote early-career researchers, with a second symposium on the history of ideas in technology currently planned for autumn 2025 in New York. In this sense, the first workshop promoted horizontal networking between scientists from different countries on the one hand, and vertical exchange between established researchers and young researchers on the other.

The academic gathering offered professors and young researchers from New York and Darmstadt the opportunity to identify differences and similarities in the German and North American debates, to advance transatlantic historiography in the history of technology and science, and to prepare for further cooperation. The results of the exchange will therefore be compiled at the end of 2025 and published in the form of a special issue in an academic journal. The target publications for this are leading journals in the history of ideas and/or technology, such as the Journal of the History of Ideas, Modern Intellectual History, History and Technology, and Technikgeschichte, with which numerous institutional and professional contacts exist.

The project examines how President Trump's questioning of American security guarantees affects German foreign Policy preferences, defense spending, and transatlantic relations. It seeks seed funding to conduct a pilot study and hold a workshop to discuss the pilot result and prepare a funding application for a larger project.

The project expands the research agenda on transatlantic relations beyond its core traditionally defined through state policies and bilateral interactions. More specifically, recognizing their importance for global order, it intends to unpack transatlantic relations conceptually and empirically by looking at their different layers. Thereby, the projects aims at creating a larger research community which comes together at two different workshops and secures long-term funding by a third party.

The project examines how 'exclusionary speech' – which encompasses slurs, name-calling, and verbal prohibitions against whole social groups in various contexts – shifts social norms and public discourse. It addresses this question from a multidisciplinary perspective, bringing together linguistic, social epistemologists, and philosophers for a collaborative, research-based workshop, followed by a policy-oriented public forum.

The interdisciplinary, transatlantic project latches onto the notion of mobilizing "the Archive" in/for a de/colonized present with regard to the scholar as archon in contemporaneous academic and museal endeavours of mobilizing archives and curating pasts-imperial, post-colonial, and post-socialist contexts in Germany and the United States.

This project compares anti-Islamist sentiment in Germany and the US. Aiming to decipher whether the drivers of anti-Islamism are the same on both sides of the Atlantic, it plans to conduct an original survey that taps into the constituents of why citizens adopt Islam-critical attitudes.

The project joins scholars trained in political science, comparative historical (and cultural) sociology, North American Studies, and political theory in order to offer a theoretical redescription of the "contemporary crisis of democracy" centered on recent experiences in the United States and Federal Republic of Germany.

The initial goal of the conference was to generate and explore theory-based hypotheses on the mechanisms of transatlantic crisis resilience in three areas: security, economic relations, and international institutional order. By inviting both theoreticians and policy pundits, the project was set up to track and examine the adaptive and transformative capacity of transatlantic political institutions. The starting assumption was to account for the variety of adaptive and resilience mechanisms, which conventional academic research oftentimes overlook, by employing a pluralistic understanding of crisis as a short-term and strong volatility of power relations, economic distributional gains/losses, values, and institutions. In short, the researchers had in mind a theory-based assessment of transatlantic crisis management across policy areas from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

The research did not anticipate that changing events, such as the US presidential elections, the Brexit, or the impact of the migration crisis on European national elections, would interfere with a smooth theory-based investigation of the variance in transatlantic crisis resilience across different policy areas. Hence, the researchers adjusted and extended the scope of their initial research proposal, now focusing on two central elements: First, they kept the focus on crisis resilience which they believe can occur and/or vary along three social mechanisms (institutions/values/division of labor). These social mechanisms may or may not explain why transatlantic relations are more resilient than other non-democratic or mixed relationships and why resilience may vary over time and policy areas. Second, the research also wanted to explore if and how those mechanisms buffer the upcoming policy conflicts between the new Trump administration and the EU member states. This, of course, includes effects of the Brexit decision and other policy crisis in the Union or Europe. In a way, the research adapted to the new circumstances by shifting the analytical dimension of crisis and by broadening our empirical assessment.

The results of the conference which was funded by the Foundation on German-American Academic Relations were published as an edited volume with the title "The Politics of Resilience and Transatlantic Order: Enduring Crisis?" (Routledge, 2019).

The funding provided by the Foundation on German-American Academic Relations was used for the organisation of two workshops that took place in 2014 and 2016. During the first workshop, the main goal was to establish a common foundation regarding important data as well as to plan the future work of the study group. In 2015 we started to implement this plan. During this work, we focused on three questions:

1. the dynamic and comparative analysis of global innovation networks of established large corporations
2. the analysis of the shape and effects of collaborative innovations of multinational corporations from emerging economies (China) in highly developed innovation systems
3. the analysis of network structures of global innovation networks

The second workshop was conducted in 2016. During this workshop we focused mostly on the final discussion of results, publications, and further application for funding.

The study group's work resulted in the following publications: 

• Liefner, Ingo, Yue-fang Si, und Kerstin Schäfer. 2019. A Latecomer Firm’s R&D Collaboration with Advanced Country Universities and Research Institutes: The Case of Huawei in Germany. Technovation 86: 3-14.
• Schaefer, Kerstin J., und Ingo Liefner. 2017. Offshore Versus Domestic: Can EM MNCs Reach Higher R&D Quality Abroad? Scientometrics 113: 1349-1370.

Publications as WorkingPapers / in preparation:

• Si, Y.F. und Ingo Liefner. Intrafirm Knowledge Management Across Space – Samantabhadra Model Based On the Case Study of Huawei.
• Liefner, Ingo, und S. Hennemann. Dynamics of Places and Technologies in Multinational Companies' Global Innovation Networks.

The workshop that was funded by the Foundation on German-American Academic Relations that took place in 2015 was particularly concerned with three broad topics. The first panel, set up around the topic of collective defense and the US-Japan Alliance, examines the current status of the US-Japan alliance as it relates to military and humanitarian intervention. The second panel focused on collective security. It scrutinized Japan's politics on military and humanitarian intervention, discusses the extent to which Tokyo has supported interventions and surveys the key rationales for participation or non-participation. The last panel analysed the role of domestic politics for military and humanitarian interventions. Especially it sought to address the "two-level-game" between domestic and foreign policy and what similar and different parameters and limitations major key actors set for supporting or resisting Japan's military and humanitarian intervention.

The study group's point of departure was the observation that the defense industry is different from most economic sectors to the extent that governments sponsor research and development, regulate transfers and constitute the primary clients of production. Yet, the defense-industrial sector's place between the state and the market is increasingly challenge by globalization. For instance, the growing internationalization of supply chains is undermining the state's capacity to meet their defense needs solely through domestic production. This even applies to the United States, the world's largest arms producer, arms market, and arms exporter. In addition, the emergence of multinational defense contractors is rendering state control over arms production and weapons transfer increasingly problematic.

The study group's key questions are, first, how to explain the similarities and differences of how states respond to the challenge of defense-industrial globalization; and, second, whether these dynamics lead to increased competition or to more collaboration at both the corporate and the political levels. Over the course of our joint research, we became increasingly aware of another challenge from genuinely political globalization processes: European integration and the unforeseen consequences of supranational self-empowerment. The following research papers are the result of this group's efforts to fill some of the gaps in the literature:

• Blauberger, Michael und Moritz Weiss. 2013. "If you can't beat me, join me." How the Commission pushed and pulled Member states into legislating defence procurement. Journal of European Public Policy 20 (8): 1120-1138.
• DeVore, Marc R. 2014. Defying Convergence: Globalisation and Varieties of Defence-Industrial Capitalism. New Political Economy 20 (4): 569-593.
• DeVore, Marc R., und Moritz Weiss. Who's in the Cockpit? The Political Economy of Collaborative Aircraft Decisions. Review of International Political Economy 21 (2): 497-533.
• Erickson, Jennifer L. 2015. Dangerous Trade: Arms Export, Human Rights, and International Reputation. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Weiss, Moritz, und Michael Blauberger. 2016. Judicialized Law-Making and Opportunistic Enforcement: Explaining the EU's Challenge of National Defence Offsets. Journal of Common Market Studies 54 (2): 1-19.

The impacts of climate change on human populations at a global scale are both diverse and complex. At the regional level, the perception of climate change impacts is strongly influenced by underlying social realities. In order to develop a model for climate change adaptation policies, it is essential to understand the relative importance of broad social conditions (e.g. political system, cultural peculiarities, national history, etc.) and localized social deprivations (income, infrastructure, public services, etc.) on the perception of climate change impacts at the community level.

The goal of the CC-VISAGES project (Climate Change Inferred through Social Analysis, Geography and Environmental Systems) is to investigate the possibility of a general environmental justice pattern of climate change impacts on communities. Under such general pattern, the distribution of environmental burdens and the access to environmental goods in a climate change context can be generalized across countries based on social marginalization variables.

The project assesses the presence of a general environmental justice pattern of climate change impacts by conducting field research in Brazil, Canada, and Germany. First, a geographical representation of climate change vulnerabilities for the selected countries will be created based on ecological, social, and climate variables through a geographical information system (GIS). CC-VISAGES will then select areas in each country with high climate change vulnerabilities and perform comparative field research to understand the local perspectives on climate change impacts. From these field analyses of stakeholders' perceptions, the global pattern of environmental justice will be sought. The results will provide a strong framework for stakeholders of all kind (political and economic decision-makers, NGOs, civil society) to make appropriate climate change adaptation plans informed by both ecological and social realities. The CC-VISAGES project provides a much-needed multi-disciplinary perspective to both European, South and North American nations to deal with the multifaceted issue of climate change. Furthermore, the European – America's Science Cooperation will be strengthened by the establishment of an interdisciplinary and international research unit that will outlive the period of CC-VISAGES.

The project was concerned with the connection between real estate policy, pension schemes and fertility (that is, family support) within the developed OECD member states. The central thesis of the project was, that there are increasing interdependencies between these three areas of society that show specific characteristics in European countries as well as the United States of America. The way in which real estate is funded in different societies is tightly connected to the pension system. The long-term stability of the pension system on the other hand is dependent on family policy. Access to the real estate market influences the decision to build family households and thus the decision for offspring. The financial crisis had different influences on the dynamics of these three policy areas within the different countries. The aim of the project was to analyse comparatively different aspects of these connections in Europe as well as the USA via several case studies.

The research demonstrated that the financial crisis had a significant impact on the (re-) development of the family as a social network because starting a family became increasingly difficult as the access to the housing market diminished. At the same time, the importance of owning a house as retirement saving also increased withing the higher earning strata of society.