Social Protection (M.Sc.)
MSc Social Protection Insights: October
October 2023: Social Protection Insights
📢 Our 2023/24 Batch: Who Are We?
One of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of our programme is that our students come from all over the world.
Our 2023/24 batch is made up of 35 students from 19 different countries. We are so excited to have you all here in Germany!
📢 Social Protection Student Wins Best Thesis Award!
We are so proud and excited to share that Amirhosein Rahbari of Batch 2020 is the winner of the 2023 Best Thesis Award in the Department of Social Policy and Social Security Studies at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences.
Amirhosein's award winning thesis is titled, "Social Protection and Climate Change Adaptation: The Case Study of The Philippines."
Here's a short abstract:
"This thesis introduces a comprehensive framework for assessing the convergence of social protection and climate change adaptation (SP-CCA nexus) across policy, coordination, financing, and program levels. This innovative analytical tool is adaptable to various settings. By conducting an extensive review of documents and engaging in key informant interviews, the study systematically evaluates the SP-CCA nexus within the Philippines' context, culminating in a set of recommendations for system enhancement."
Congratulations again to Amirhosein on an amazing project! We look forward to continuing to support all of your great work that is to come.
Module 1: Comparative Analysis of Social Protection Systems
This week, our new students embarked on their social protection learning journey by starting their very first module! 📚👨🎓👩🎓
Our curriculum is structured in a modular way
Each module contains three to four sub-modules, which are taught in a blocked week. After or during each module, students are writing the respective exam. This means that the content is divided into distinct, self-contained sub-modules and modules, each focusing on specific topics or subject areas, and building on each other.
The first module "Comparative Analysis of Social Protection Systems" is divided into four sub-modules:
M1.1 Constitutive Elements: taught by our H-BRS professor for social sustainability and sociologist Prof. Dr. Kerstin Rosenow-Williams
- This course tackles the role and definition, typologies and conceptual frameworks of social protection, introduces the system's approach and core instruments.
M1.2 Determining Factors: taught by our guest professor Dr Dr Masauso Chirwa
- This course helps students gain deeper insights into the determinants, driving forces and political economy models of social protection.
M1.3 Comparative Social Protection Analysis: taught by our research assistant Darleen Kolbe
- In this course, students learn to make use of indicators and qualitative and quantitative databases on social protection programmes, social expenditure and coverage, such as the ILO Social Protection Dashboard, the Missoc database, the ISSA country profiles and the CODI tool, for comparative analysis.
M1.4 International Social Protection Policy: taught by Gabriele Köhler
- The last course deals with international crises affecting the welfare state, global policy ideas and initiatives, norms and regulations (e.g. Sustainable Development Goals, ILO Recommendations and Conventions), coordination at regional and international level. The highlight of this course is an excursion to Brussels, Belgium, to visit the European Commission, International Trade Union Confederation - ITUC, The German Social Insurance European Representation and a walking tour covering important social project sites of the city.
By the end of this module, students will be familiarised with the basic concepts, main actors as well as theoretical approaches behind the rise, growth and entrenchement of social protection systems. They have learnt how to compare different social protection systems and study the constitutive elements as well as differences across systems. Students are sensitized about the importance of political and other contextual factors when it comes to system design and also get to understand that the welfare state is no longer a purely national affair but shaped by regional and global influences and regulations.
More information about all modules can be found in the module handbook on our website: Social Protection (MSc) | Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (H-BRS)
Get to Know Our Students, Lecturers & Alumni
Students of the Month
Name: Nourjelha M. Yousif
Batch: 2023/24
Country of Origin: Sudan
Social Protection Experience: Nourjelha is a DAAD scholarship recipient who has experience working as a research consultant for IPC-IG, where she was involved in research projects in social protection in West Africa and the MENA region. She also worked for a flagship social protection program in Sudan called "Shamil" as a project manager for the Ministry of Social Development.
Research Interests: Merging IT and social protection, specifically finding ways to integrate informal workers into social registries and integrated social protection systems
„The programme enhances both the practical and theoretical knowledge needed to design and strengthen the social protection systems in our developing countries.”
Nourjelha M. Yousif - 2023/24 Batch
Name: Mohamed Abdirahman Aden
Batch: 2023/24
Country of Origin: Somaliland
Social Protection Experience: Mahamed has worked with the Government of Somiland's social protection sector in various capacities for over 6 years. For example, he led the development of the first-ever social protection policy as the Director of Planning and Policy at the Ministry of Employment, Social Affairs, and Family, coordinated social protection actors for the Somaliland Social Protection Working Group Platform, contributed to the National Development Plan (NDPIII), and managed and facilitated the implementation government-led social protection programs. His local NGO Solidarity Action Against Poverty (SAAP) aims at alleviating poverty, building resilient communities, and promoting sustainable livelihoods through social protection systems.
Research Interests: Social protection financing in fragile and post-conflict societies; complementarity of Tradition and formal social protection systems; child-, gender-, and disability-sensitive social protection; livelihood resilience and shock-responsive social protection
„I have decided for this program as it is designed to encompass both theoretical knowledge and practical skills, with a particular emphasis on sustainable social protection systems. It addresses normative decisions related to social protection systems and policy setting, integrating evidence and reality from both the Global North and South.”
Mahamed Abdirahman - 2023/24 Batch
Alumni Spotlight
Name: Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong, Ph.D.
Batch: 2021
Country of Origin: Cameroon
Current Role: Young Professional Economist at The World Bank
Previously Martin was a Associate Research Fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and during his own PhD research in the field of Agricultural Economics, he consulted with The World Bank in Washington and South Africa as well as WorldFish, was a Genebank Impacts Fellow at Crop Trust and a Visiting Researcher at CIAT in Colombia.
Master's Thesis Topic: From Protection to Production: The Productive Impacts of Cash Transfers and Health Insurance in Ghana
„This amazing Master's programme has fully developed my conceptual understanding of what social protection really is and how it can be operationalised to reduce poverty in developing countries. Hands on, pragmatic and very novel curriculum - enabling great interaction between students and lecturers, most of whom are practitioners in the field. This unique Master's afforded me the opportunity to learn and interact with social protection experts and those becoming experts in the nearest future.”
Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong - 2021 Batch, Alum
Meet Our Lecturers
Name: Gabriele Köhler
Position: Senior Research Associate UNRISD
Teaching since: 2015
Course(s) in 2023/24: M1.4 International Social Protection Policy
Country of Origin: Germany
Expertise: SDGs, Human Rights, Social Protection, Development economist, Board Member of Women in Europe for a Common Future and Committee Member of UNICEF Germany.
Gabriele has been with the programme since its inception and we always look forward of bringing her and her international expertise in during the first module. Students can benefit from her extensive experience as an independent development economist, advisor and publicist but also her working knowledge of the UN system, which she gained as an economist at United Nations ESCAP and UNCTAD, the UNDP Resident-Representative, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative in Latvia, Regional Advisor on Social Policy for UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia in Nepal, and Senior Research Associate at UNRISD.
Contact Us!
We are always interested in creating partnerships with those of you working in the field! We would love to hear from you if are interested in
- being a #ThesisSupervisor,
- providing #Internship opportunities to our students,
- publishing a paper in our #WorkingPaper series, or
- visiting our university as a #GuestSpeaker!
Your feedback and suggestions to improve the newsletter are also very welcome.