[1][2] He was awarded the 1983 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research.
[3][4] In 1972, Jens Alber graduated from University of Konstanz in sociology, political science and psychology.
From 1986 to 1991, Jens Alber worked as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.
In 1991 he took over the chair of social policy at the faculty of administrative sciences of the University of Konstanz, which he held until 2001.
From 2002 to 2011 Jens Alber was director of the department "Inequality and Social Integration" at the Social Science Research Center Berlin and professor of sociology at the Free University of Berlin.