External Member Heike Solga
Prof. Dr Heike Solga, born in 1964, is Director of the Research Department "Skill Formation and Labor Markets” at the WZB – Berlin Social Science Center (a member institute of the Leibniz Association) and Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Sociology at the Freie Universität of Berlin.
Prof. Solga studied sociology at Humboldt University in Berlin (1983-1988) and at Stanford University (1990-1991). She was a doctoral candidate in the East German Life History Study at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and received her Ph.D. from the Freie Universität Berlin in 1995 with a dissertation on class mobility in the GDR, for which she was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society. With a research stay at Harvard University (1998) and a visiting associate professorship at Yale University (2024) in between, she remained at the MPI for Human Development as head of the junior research group “Lack of Training: Employment and Life Chances of the Less Educated” until 2005. In 2003, she habilitated at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2004 she accepted a professorship at the University of Leipzig and in 2005 at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen. Since 2008 she works at the WZB and the Freie Universität Berlin.
Prof. Solga was a member of the German Council of Science and Humanities (2008-2024 and 2023/24 Chair of the Scientific Commission), the Board of Trustees of the Volkswagen Foundation (2014-2019), the Senate and Grants Committee for Research Training Groups (2007-201 0) and the Senate and Joint Committee (2010-2016) of the DFG, the Research Council of the European University Institute (EUI, 2017-2021) and the Board of Trustees of the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) (2016-2024). She was also a member of the Enquete Commission of the German Bundestag on “Vocational Training in the Digital Working Environment” (2018-2021) and of the Federal Youth Council of the German Federal Government (2014-2017). Since 2021 she is President of the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR).
Prof. Solga investigates the relationship between educational and labor market inequalities with a special focus on the low-skilled in Germany and in international comparison, examining the influence of institutional factors. She uses quantitative methods. She is PI of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), a multi-cohort longitudinal study. In 2018, she was elected a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW). She has been awarded the Berlin Science Prize (2013) and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2023) for her research and engagement.
She joined the Heidelberg University Council in October 2024.
