Conference Theme

The last three decades have been characterized by processes of increasing transnationalization and globalization, and modern societies have undergone profound changes in their social structures and employment systems:

• In this process, education has become increasingly important for individuals’ life chances. However, modern societies vary in how successfully they enable their citizens to acquire adequate qualifications and competencies, and in how far they offer equal opportunities to children from different social backgrounds and especially to the children of immigrants.
• Under increasing adaptation and flexibility pressures from globalized labour markets, the nature of work has diversified, and previously dominant standard employment forms have become supplemented by new ‘atypical’ forms of employment.
• Similarly, profound changes have been observed in family life: fertility has decreased, family forms have diversified, previously dominant social institutions such as marriage are becoming increasingly unstable, common-law unions are on the rise and the traditional division of paid and unpaid work between partners has been called more and more into question.
• As a consequence, modern welfare states are facing rising pressures to introduce reforms that will accommodate these socio-economic changes. Most recently, these pressures have been further intensified by predicted demographic changes that will provide new challenges to the sustainability of adequate social security systems.
• To respond adequately to the fundamental changes currently facing our societies, social scientists will need to develop new comparative methodological tools and generate new nation-specific and cross-national data sources.

With this background in mind, the joint ECSR/QMSS2/TransEurope conference aims to bring together researchers working in the area of (internationally comparative) research on socio-economic change from all across Europe and beyond, and invite them to present and discuss their most recent methodological approaches and empirical findings.

The conference will be organized into four different topical streams, each dealing with one specific field:

Internationally renowned scientific experts will provide five focused keynote lectures on up-to-date research issues in the various sociological fields this conference addresses. The invited keynote speakers of the conference are:

• Professor Richard Breen (Yale University, United States)
• Dr. Erzsébet Bukodi (Centre for Longitudinal Studies, London Institiute of Education, United Kingdom) and Professor John Goldthorpe (Nuffield College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
• Professor Gøsta Esping-Andersen (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain)
• Professor Céline Le Bourdais (McGill University, Canada)
• Professor Jeroen Vermunt (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)

NB: Keynote speakers listed in alphabetical order.

• Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Blossfeld
• Prof. Dr. Thorsten Schneider
• Dr. Sandra Buchholz
• Dr. Dirk Hofäcker (working at Mannheim University since 1 October 2010)
  
• Dr. Svetlana Tvorogova (back in Moscow since mid of October 2010)
  

The ESF-funded projects 'QMSS2' and 'TransEurope' support various papers with a conference grant. The papers supported by a grant were selected during the evaluation of submitted papers in spring. Authors of these papers had been informed in May. 

We are pleased that with the support of these grants offered by ‘QMSS2’ and ‘TransEurope’ we are able to welcome especially a greater number of young researchers as well as scientists from Eastern Europe to our conference. All in all, we were able to award 35 scholars with a conference grant. Sessions with papers supported by a conference grant are labelled as ‘QMSS2’ and ‘TransEurope’ sessions in the conference programme.

All below fees include coffee breaks and lunches throughout the three-day conference.

* For more information about the banking details, please see below.

For transferring your conference fee please note the following information.

• International transfers from non-German banks:
  Bank: Deutsche Bundesbank Filiale Regensburg
  IBAN: DE84750000000074301530
  BIC/SWIFT: MARKDEF1750
  Account holder: Bamberg University
  
  
• Transfers from German banks:
  Bank: Deutsche Bundesbank Filiale Regensburg
  BLZ: 750 000 00
  Konto-Nr.: 743 015 30
  Empfänger: Universität Bamberg

Always add the following codes in the reference fields of your bank transfer form (please use two separate lines for the codes):

• First, refer to the reference number for ECSR 2010 registrations, that is, 1526.0155.4403.
• In a second line, please add the reference number of your paper. You received this number, when we informed you that your paper was invited to the conference.

Together with your conference bag, you will receive a certificate of your conference attendance indicating also the fees you paid.