Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences

On 1 April 2023, two new faculties emerged from the former Faculty of Arts and Humanities: the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences and the Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies. The two faculties serve a total of more than 6,000 students enrolled in 26 degree programmes.

Of central concern to the faculty are the empirically-oriented social science degree programmes and teacher education programmes, and a strong international focus in research and teaching. Thus, most of our students take the opportunity to visit at least one of our numerous partner universities in 45 different countries during their degree studies. In return, the Faculty of Social Science and Education is pleased to welcome numerous lecturers and students from many countries in Passau every semester. To promote international scholarly exchange, the faculty offers two exchange programmes to complement the faculty's worldwide university partnerships: the International Visiting Lecturers Programme and the International Visiting Academics Programme. They deepen and enrich the international teaching and research output of the faculty.

The focal points of the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences are political science, sociology, communication science, geography and teacher education. For all four teacher education programmes, the faculty oversees the pedagogical/education theory modules. It does so in close cooperation with the other faculties – Law; Business, Economics and Information Systems; Computer Science and Mathematics; and Humanities and Cultural Studies – who provide discipline-specific modules for the individual teaching subjects.

Another focus of the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences is on the interdisciplinarity of its degree programmes. This allows our us to engage in comprehensive exploration and analysis of ever more complex and multi-layered systems and structures. This interdisciplinary linking of mentalities, approaches and methods is reflected in the faculty's cutting-edge Bachelor's and Master's degree programmes.