SHARE BERLIN INSTITUTE GMBH

Their core work

SHARE Berlin Institute GmbH is the German institutional hub of SHARE — the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, one of the largest cross-national longitudinal panel studies in the world, covering populations aged 50+ across 28 EU member states. Their core work involves supporting the development, coordination, and operation of this research infrastructure, which tracks health, social, and economic conditions over time to inform policy on ageing and retirement. Beyond infrastructure maintenance, they conduct substantive research using SHARE data, most recently analyzing the unintended health, economic, and social consequences of COVID-19 pandemic control decisions. Their value lies not in building new research capacity from scratch but in providing privileged, structured access to one of Europe's most comprehensive longitudinal population datasets.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their early H2020 work (2019, SHARE-COHESION) was squarely focused on sustaining and expanding the SHARE research infrastructure itself — panel survey design, cross-national data collection, and the mechanics of coordinating ageing and retirement research across 28 countries. By 2020, while remaining embedded in that infrastructure, their keyword profile shifted toward applying the SHARE dataset to an urgent real-world crisis: COVID-19's broad societal effects, with transdisciplinarity appearing as an explicit framing. This trajectory shows an organization moving from infrastructure caretaker toward active research actor, using the platform they help operate as a rapid-response instrument for population-level health and economic analysis.

They are shifting from pure infrastructure participation toward applied research that mobilizes SHARE data for pressing societal questions — a trajectory that makes them increasingly relevant for health crisis, social policy, and economic resilience research.

How they like to work

SHARE Berlin Institute has not led any H2020 project, contributing instead as participant or third party — consistent with their role as one node within a large, stable, pre-existing consortium built around the SHARE platform. Despite only two projects, they connect with 18 unique partners across 12 countries, which reflects the inherently multinational structure of SHARE rather than independent network-building. Working with them likely means engaging with the broader SHARE ecosystem, since their participation is tightly coupled to that infrastructure and its governing consortium.

With 18 unique partners across 12 countries from just two projects, their network is pan-European and structurally determined by the SHARE consortium, which spans most EU member states. Their geographic footprint is broad on paper but concentrated within a single research infrastructure community.

What sets them apart

SHARE Berlin Institute is not a generalist research center — it is a purpose-built institutional vehicle for Germany's participation in the SHARE infrastructure, giving it a very specific and non-replicable position in European population health research. Few organizations can offer direct access to 28-country longitudinal panel data on ageing, retirement, and health spanning decades of individual-level observations. For consortia building projects that need credible cross-national population data, established survey infrastructure, or a connection into the SHARE network, this organization is a direct gateway that no generic German research institute can substitute.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SHARE-COVID19
  Demonstrated the ability to rapidly pivot the SHARE longitudinal platform from its core ageing mandate to crisis-response research, generating EU-funded analysis of pandemic policy consequences across the continent.
• SHARE-COHESION
  Core infrastructure project developing and innovating SHARE across all 28 EU member states — the foundation that makes all other SHARE-based research possible, including SHARE-COVID19.