Doctoral School of Social Sciences, University of Trento

The Doctoral School focuses on the knowledge in the field of the social sciences by promoting and organizing doctoral programmes in Development Economics and Local Systems, Economics and Management, Sociology and Social Research and Sustainability: Economics, Environment, Management and Society (SUSTEEMS).

The mission of the Doctoral School of Social Sciences is to:

• Offer a broad common methodological training in the economic and social sciences context, promoting the use of new methods of research offering a wide range of applications in Social Sciences.
• Enhance multidisciplinary and frontier approaches with a broader perspective than those strictly disciplinary, when studying employment, development, institutional and organizational design.
• Offer both disciplinary and interdisciplinary Ph.D. Programmes.
• Give students the opportunity to live in a vibrant research environment, interacting with scholars with different perspectives of studying economy and society in a strongly international exchange context.

The main focus areas of the School Programmes are as follows:

1. Methodologies supporting an empirical approach to the study of the economic and social behaviour as well as the use of non-standard approaches based on experimental and computational economics and a behavioural approach to decision and organization sciences.
2. International commerce especially focusing on relations between global and local development. As one of the main topics will be considered the economic networks building activity.
3. Innovation particularly connected with local development and social innovation.
4. The classical themes of contemporary sociology, among which social change,  social inequalities - such as educational, cohort and gender inequalities - migration studies, labor market studies,  welfare systems, and sociology of organizations. Often a comparative - perspective - over space or time - is adopted. Specific attention is devoted to the methodological aspects of social research, as well as to the topics of public policy evaluation.
5. The study how the principles of economic, environmental and social sustainability can inform economic models, models and tools for managing natural resources, business models and management tools for companies, institutions and organizations (including both for-profit and non-profit ones).

The Doctoral School offers a series of doctoral curriculums each year, which are presented at the start of the academic year in the School’s Manifesto Studiorum.

Furthermore, the Doctoral School organizes seminars, meetings and additional research events in collaboration with external partners and for the length of the academic year.