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Katharina Sass

Associate Professor
  • E-mailkatharina.sass@uib.no
  • Phone+47 55 58 96 81
  • Visitor Address
    Sosiologisk institutt, Rosenbergsgaten 39
    Bergen
    Room 
    211
  • Postal Address
    Postboks 7802
    5020 Bergen

Research field

My research fields and interests are comparative-historical sociology, sociology of education and education politics, and more generally, comparative political economy. I have also done comparative-historical research on prostitution politics and on labor unions, with a focus on Scandinavia.

I am currently involved in the NFR-research project "Admission Impossible? School Choice in European Cities" (start date 1st of October 2021). Within this project, I am responsible for project 2, which investigates different models of school choice in Norway, making use of a combination of survey data, qualitative interviews and focus groups with parents and students of different socio-economic backgrounds to gain an insight into their experiences and preferences regarding school choice.

Other topics I am interested in are the prolongation of compulsory schooling, girls' educational expansion or state-church relations in education politics.

My PhD-project consisted of a comparison of lower secondary education reforms in Norway and Germany during the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on comprehensive school reforms. In my thesis ("Cleavages and Coalitions", 2018), I analyze debates and power struggles around the reforms, focusing on collective actors such as political parties and teachers' organizations, their power resources, ideology, coalitions and conflicts.

 

I currently teach the BA module SOS100 (Invitation to Sociology). I have previously taught the MA module SOS322 (Work, Class and Education) and the BA module SOS108 (Education and Society).

Academic article
  • Show author(s) (2023). Bündnis der Gesamtschulgegner*innen? Die Rolle der CDU in der Bildungspolitik von NRW in den 1950er bis 1970er Jahren. DDS Die Deutsche Schule - Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, Bildungspolitik und pädagogische Praxis. 302-314.
  • Show author(s) (2022). The Gender Cleavage: Updating Rokkanian Theory for the Twenty-First Century. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society.
  • Show author(s) (2022). Struggling for girls’ education: coalition strategies of Norwegian and German women’s rights activists in comparative-historical perspective. Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education. 1-20.
  • Show author(s) (2016). Bestraft die Freier! Der Erfolg der skandinavischen Sexkaufverbote. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik. 113-120.
  • Show author(s) (2015). Understanding comprehensive school reforms: Insights from comparative-historical sociology and power resources theory. European Educational Research Journal. 240-256.
  • Show author(s) (2014). How to sit on Two Sides of the Table? Swedish and Norwegian Unions’ Approaches to Representative Worker Participation during the 20th Century. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies. 79-98.
Academic lecture
  • Show author(s) (2017). Cleavages and coalitions. Comprehensive school reforms in Norway and North Rhine-Westphalia/Germany, 1954-1979.
  • Show author(s) (2015). Comprehensive School Reforms in Norway, 1954-1979, Lecture at the Berlin Social Science Center (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, WZB).
  • Show author(s) (2015). Comprehensive School Reforms in Norway and Germany, 1954-1979.
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
  • Show author(s) (2017). Mythos "Sexarbeit". Argumente gegen Prostitution und Sexkauf. PapyRossa Verlag.

More information in national current research information system (CRIStin)

Katharina Sass (2022): The Politics of Comprehensive School Reforms: Cleavages and Coalitions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available with Open Access.

Katharina Sass, Stein Kuhnle (2022): The Gender Cleavage: Updating Rokkanian Theory for the Twenty-First Century, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxac003  

Katharina Sass (2020): Cleavage structures and school politics: a Rokkanian comparative-historical analysis, in: History of Education, 49 (5), pp. 636-660, https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2020.1747645

Katharina Sass (2018). Sass, Katharina. Cleavages and Coalitions. Comprehensive School Reforms in Norway and North Rhine-Westphalia/Germany (1954-1979). University of Bergen 2018 (ISBN 978-82-308-3747-4) 414 s.

Katharina Sass (2016): Bestraft die Freier! Der Erfolg der skandinavischen Sexkaufverbote, in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 2/16, pp. 113-120.

Katharina Sass (2015): Understanding comprehensive school reforms: Insights from comparative-historical sociology and power resources theory, in: European Educational Research Journal (online), 14(3-4), pp. 240-256.

Katharina Sass (2014): How to sit on Two Sides of the Table? Swedish and Norwegian Unions’ Approaches to Representative Worker Participation during the 20th Century, in: Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 4(3), pp. 79-98.

Book Review by Katharina Sass in WSI-Mitteilungen (4/2014):Cornelia Heintze, 2013: Die Straße des Erfolgs. Rahmenbedingungen, Umfang und Finanzierung kommunaler Dienste im deutsch-skandinavischen Vergleich. Marburg: Metropolis-Verlag.  

Katharina Sass (2014): History, agency, structure and objectivity in the work of Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci. Philosophy of Science Essay, June 2014, University of Bergen, Department of Sociology.

Katharina Sass (2012): Die gewerkschaftliche Organisation in Norwegen und Schweden. Berufspartikularismus und Betriebsdemokratie als Organisationsprobleme. Diplomarbeit im Fach Soziologie. Universität zu Köln.