The sfs – Social Research Centre is one of the long established German institutes in the field of socio-scientific work research. Since 2007, the former regional institute is the central scientific institution of the TU Dortmund (university). The overarching theme of the research work is social science innovation research. The sfs participates in the design of social, technological and ecological change and innovation processes.

With its research area “Work and Education in Europe”, sfs recently participated in two research projects on the maker scene: “Make-IT“, funded by the EU Research Framework Program “Horizon 2020” and “SELFMADE“, funded by the bmbf.

In Emscher-Lippe4  sfs is responsible for the evaluation. In doing so, the centre conducts research on the progress of the project, both in comparison with the requirements of the stakeholders and in comparison with similar projects and developments. The sfs deliberately positions the project in a broad context of other scientific work. In doing so, references to other projects as well as links to existing communities and discourses are established.