YEAR 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only led to cuts in social life, education, and work in the short term, but also raises questions about its long-term effects: Did COVID-19 affect the well-being of people in Germany in the short and long term? Did the pandemic lead to systematic disadvantages for certain parts of society in terms of health and well-being and thus to growing social inequality?

The Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) invites international researchers to the 2nd COORDINATE Summer School. From July 10th to 14th a total of 30 participants from EU member states and non-EU countries will have the opportunity to take part in the extensive framework program of the Summer School in the world heritage city of Bamberg. They will learn about the most important panel data surveys on educational and employment trajectories such as the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), develop and advance their own research questions, and network with fellow scientists who have similar research interests. Applications will be accepted until April 16th.

In its current special issue, "Soziale Welt," one of the leading sociological journals in the German-speaking area, looks at the long-term consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, the six articles deal with the longer-term contexts and impacts of the Corona crisis on social inequalities. Common to all is the central question: Did the Covid-19 pandemic increase social inequality in Germany?

The Bavarian Minister of Science, Markus Blume, and the President of the Leibniz Association, Prof. Dr. Martina Brockmeier, were prominent visitors to Bamberg in mid and late January. Markus Blume was briefed on research at the Otto Friedrich University of Bamberg and at LIfBi, with a special focus on innovative digital technologies. A few days later, Martina Brockmeier, the current Leibniz President, arrived at LIfBi for her first visit.

Today, everyone has a portable supercomputer in their pocket that permanently collects data. So what could be more obvious than to use modern smartphones for research, or more precisely for data collection? In his LIfBi Lecture, Prof. Dr. Markus Bühner from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich presented this new branch of research based on the interdisciplinary research project PhoneStudy.

Has the Corona pandemic permanently changed political attitudes in Germany? Which social groups have been particularly affected? And has their participation in society also changed? On February 1, 2023, the BMBF-funded project "Political Attitudes and Political Participation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic" (PEPP-Cov) started at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi). For the first time, PEPP-Cov investigates these questions using repeated surveys based on data from the National Educational Panel Study.

Today, Monday, January 30, 2023, the members of the newly established Ethics Committee of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) met for their constituent meeting. Dr. Patrick Rummel was elected chairman. The deputy chairman is Simon Dickopf. The Ethics Committee reviews research projects conducted on behalf of LIfBi. The review process enables researchers to enter into an exchange and to examine, reflect and, if necessary, optimize their own research design against the background of ethically relevant questions. With the establishment of an ethics committee, LIfBi follows the standards of the Leibniz Code of Good Research Practice.

As of January, a new junior research group has started work at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi). The independent Emmy Noether Junior Research Group "GenDiT - Gender in the Age of Digitization and Technological Change", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), aims to analyze the links between digitization, technological change and gender inequalities in the education system and the labor market. The group is led by Dr. Malte Reichelt, who obtained the funding and moved from New York University Abu Dhabi to LIfBi at the beginning of the year.

The 7th International NEPS Conference of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) took place again in virtual format this year on December 5 and 6. About 300 scientists from Germany and abroad met for exchange. On the first day of the conference, the "NEPS Publication Award" was again presented for outstanding papers based on NEPS data - this year it had been awarded to Barcelona and Dublin. The two-day conference was organized by the team of the LIfBi Research Data Center (FDZ-LIfBi).

On December 8, 2022, the Research Data Center of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (FDZ-LIfBi) published the third Scientific Use File (SUF) of the panel study ReGES "Refugees in the German Educational System" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) under the grant number Flucht03. This means that scientists can now access data from seven survey waves and use them for their own evaluations. The ReGES study ran from 2016 to 2021 in five federal states and has been continued in a follow-up project since 2022.