The GSSC has a broad research profile that includes numerous departments, institutes, and research units among them the Institute of Geography, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Department of History, Linguistics and Literary Studies, Regional Studies, Islamic Studies, Modern Chinese Studies, and African Studies.

The outstanding status of research conducted by members of the GSSC is confirmed by renowned awards, prizes, and grants. Particularly noteworthy here, among others, is 2021 the ERC Advanced Grant, Europe’s most important promotional award to Michael Bollig, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2019 - the most important award for young academics in Germany - which has been awarded to Stefanie Gänger (Department of History). The Leibniz Prize 2017 of the German Research Foundation (DFG) awarded to Anne Storch (Institute for African Studies), the Leo-Spitzer-Prize awarded to Michael Bollig (Social and Cultural Anthropology), the University Prize in the category “Research” awarded to Barbara Potthast (Iberian and Latin American History), as well as the successful founding of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC), “Future Rural Africa”.

The members of the GSSC are involved in a large number of third-party funded research projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond.

The GSSC has implemented a research data storage infrastructure in order to provide open access and safeguard the continuity of data curation on a long term.

The members are committed to scientific integrity in their research, work according to the rules of Good Scientific Practice and are following the position paper of the German Committee for Sustainability Research (DKN).