Sinking cities: Urban political environments in the age of sea level rise
| Runtime | since 04.2022 |
| Role | Principal Investigator |
| Funding | German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the RTG 2725 „Urban Future-Making“ |
| Description | The research project addresses sea-level rise as a challenge for urban future-making. Stemming from the observation that sea-level rise will have a massive impact – especially on coastal cities – in the coming decades, the project focuses on the political role of architecture in shaping urban futures. The project looks at cities already at risk of permanent flooding due to severe land subsidence, assuming that these are the first waves of sinking cities, where large parts of the built environment will undergo massive changes if no significant political measures are taken to control the water level. Addressing issues of preservation, construction, but also decay and loss of built environments, the project aims to investigate processes and phenomena in sinking cities that will most likely be observed in many other cities around the world in the coming decades. For further information, see here. |
Dynamics of placemaking and digitization in Europe’s cities
| Runtime | 10.2020 – 03.2022 |
| Role | Grant Holder Manager |
| Funding | European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) |
| Description | This project investigates how placemaking activities, like public art, civil urban design, local knowledge production re-shape and reinvent public space, and improve citizens’ involvement in urban planning and urban design. Placemaking implies the multiplication and fragmentation of agents shaping the public realm. The project aims to empower citizens to contribute with citizen’s knowledge, digitization and placemaking to diverse ways of interpreting local identities in European cities. Drawing on recent theoretical insights that point to the importance of placemaking, widening citizen’s knowledge and wider application of digitization and digital communication, the project seeks to develop new methods for studying and comparing effects of disseminating local urban knowledge beyond cultural and societal borders. By doing so, it develops European urban research both theoretically and methodologically finding ways of channeling the results into the wider urban planning and governance processes. For further information, see here. |
Geographical imaginations: People’s sense of security and insecurity in a cross-generational comparison
| Runtime | 01.2020 – 12.2021 |
| Role | Research Associate, Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Ilse Helbrecht |
| Funding | German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the CRC 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces“ |
| Description | The project “Geographical Imaginations: People’s Sense of Security and Insecurity in a Cross-Generational Comparison” focuses on the extent in which the increase in complexity and re-figuration of spaces is expressed in security-related geographical imaginations. We proceed from the assumption that perceptions of space have changed dramatically among all social groups due to processes of globalisation, shifting borders, demarcation, de-anchoring, re-embedding and mediatisation. These processes give rise to great uncertainties, as current public debates on the Brexit referendum in the UK or the election results in the USA show. At the same time, identities and group affiliations are almost always established with reference to space, for example by symbolically contrasting “our space” to “the space of others”. The social and cultural contexts of individuals also significantly influence their subjective knowledge of space, specifically in relation to their experience of security and insecurity. Against this background, the project looks at the following research questions: Which geographical imaginations are relevant for subjects’ sense of security? What role do ideas of “home” play in contrast to perceptions of “the foreign”, of “what is distant”, or even in contrast to ideas of the city, the nation and globality altogether? How are these ideas connected? And how do such geographical imaginations differ across different age groups and in different national and cultural contexts? Subjective spatial knowledge will be empirically examined by conducting group discussions and problem-oriented interviews (both based on photo-elicitation) at three different places (Vancouver, Berlin, Singapore). Using the visual methodology of photo-elicitation, we want to particularly shed light on the emotional and affective dimension of security-related spatial knowledge. For further information, see here. |
Rem(a)inders of loss: A psychoanalytic geography of ruins
| Runtime | 05.2015 – 12.2019 |
| Role | PhD Candidate |
| Funding | Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Fazit Foundation |
| Description | This PhD-dissertation is dedicated to the phenomenon of urban ruination. The focus lies on the question of how crises are inscribed into ruins and what effects this inscription has on their perception. This question will be answered following a psychoanalytic framework. The thesis develops an approach that understands psychoanalysis as a theory of crisis. Therefore, the general aim of psychoanalysis is to trace how crises persist in the social reality of the subject through loss. A crisis can only persist, if there are things the subject associates with the pre-crisis era. What is needed are objects that simultaneously function as remainders and reminders of a world before the crisis. Such an object is the ruin. The ruin is a residual figure, which acquires its meaning by pointing to a loss of completeness. In order to sufficiently discuss the inscription of this loss in the ruin, the thesis negotiates the relationship between materiality and fantasy. A premise of the thesis is to understand fantasy as a central component within the perception of ruins. Insofar as the crisis is not an objective part of the ruin, but has to be inscribed into the object through fantasy, the value of the ruin depends fundamentally on the viewer’s point of view. It takes fantasy to give the ruin its aura. Otherwise it loses its status as a ruin. The results of the thesis follow an empirical study of two case studies. The Michigan Central Station in Detroit and the Sathorn Unique Tower in Bangkok are two of the world’s most prominent crisis relicts of the recent past. Through qualitative interviews, participatory observations, and an examination of visual representations, the thesis pursues the potential of a psychoanalytic geography of ruins exploring the peculiar fascination and complex impact of urban ruination. Aspects of aesthetisation of ruins play an important role in the thesis, just as questions of desire, enjoyment and anxiety. The thesis makes a strong contribution both to psychoanalytic geographies and to geographic ruin research, assigning a singular status to the ruin within psychoanalytic geographies on the one hand and highlighting the potential of a psychoanalytic reading of ruin research on the other. It consists of four peer-reviewed journal publications, each with a different theoretical focus and empirical results. |