Tilo Beckers has studied Sociology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (M.A.) and has spent an MA Graduate Year at the New School for Social Research (NY City) with the support of DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and a full fee and tuition waiver (GPA 4.0). Thereafter, he has achieved a Ph.D. (Dr. rer. pol., magna cum laude) at the University of Cologne with a thesis on ‘Homosexuality and Human Development: Genesis, Structure, and Change of the Acceptance of Same-Sex Sexual Conduct in a Cross-National Context Analysis’ (2008, in German).

Following his postdoc years, in 2010, he was an interim professor for Social Research and Stratification at the University of Osnabrück. From 2011 until 2018, he was equivalent of an assistant professor (Akad. Rat.) and a research associate (Akad. Oberrat) at HHU.

His current and most recent research focuses on attitudes toward assisted dying (personal and relational autonomy in end-of-life issues), including an international ‘Scientific Network’ (sponsored by DFG, German Science Foundation, 2014-2016) and analyses of social change and cross-national context analysis including multilevel modeling (social and moral attitudes in comparative perspective).

As member of a developing team led by Edurne Bartolomé Peral (Univ. Deusto, Bilbao, Spain) he has contributed to ‘The EVS approach to the explanation of attitudes towards beginning and end of life’, an ESS CRONOS-2 project. He has also been a cooperating partner in FRONTVIDA (Fronteras de la Vida: Value change in beginning and end-of-life issues).

His teaching includes BA seminars on religion and secularities, bodies and sexualities, biopolitics and the boundaries of life, social mechanisms and processes and most recently social things, human-AI interaction and hybrid collectives. He also teaches MA method courses including statistical analysis of survey data with a special focus on multilevel modeling in cross-national research designs.

Since 2019, Tilo Beckers, Marco Dohle and Ingo Take are examination officers for BA Social Sciences students.

Regarding ERASMUS transcripts for incoming students, first check the HHU regulations at the Department’s International Office. After your semester, you may receive the seminar assessments by the respective lecturers, then send them to to ask for an integrated transcript of records. Always state your HHU e-mail address and your student ID/matriculation number.