The Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen (FSO) is an area studies institute with two research departments, a library and an archive as well as a larger team for science communication (“outreach”). At the University of Bremen it is affiliated with the Faculty of Social Sciences.

The FSO Department of Politics and Economics has a broad research profile. In relation to Central Asia the focus is on policy studies (esp. energy policy and social policy). Academic research is accompanied by data collection projects.

FSO is running the Discuss Data project – Archiving, sharing and discussing research data on Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia. In the context of the Discuss Data project FSO has developed guidelines for the documentation of data collections as well as ethics regulations. FSO has organised a support team for academics interested in publishing their data collections on the Discuss Data platform.