Prof. Dr. Axel Franzen

Axel Franzen studied sociology, economics, and philosophy of science at the University of Mannheim (Germany) and Indiana University in Bloomington (USA). He earned his PhD at the University of Bern in 1997 and his habilitation in 2003. After teaching positions at the University of Aachen (as associate professor) and the University of Cologne (as full professor) he returned to the University of Bern in 2009 where he became the director of the Institute of Sociology. His main teaching and research interests are methods of empirical social research, game theory, environmental sociology, and research on social capital and networks. He has published about 80 articles in scientific journals such as Global Environmental Change, Experimental Economics, Social Networks, and Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, and is the author of books on environmental behavior and social capital.