Foto: Henning Schacht
14. February | 2024 | News

During their joint visit to the IRS on 14 February, Federal Construction Minister Klara Geywitz and Brandenburg's Science Minister Manja Schüle announced that both ministries would provide a total of 15 million euros for the renovation of the institute building. more info

07. December | 2023 | News

IRS economic geographer Marc Schulze received the Peter Meusburger Doctoral Prize "Geography and Knowledge" 2023 for his research on university branches and economic development strategies in Asia. Schulze conducted his research as a doctoral student in the IRS junior research group "Transedu", which investigates the globalisation of higher education. The prize is awarded in honour of the geographer Peter Meusburger, who played a key role in advancing research into the relationship between space and knowledge. more info

Die Grenze zwischen Litauen und Belarus, 2008. Quelle: jo.sau, Wikimedia Commons
24. November | 2023 | News
Sociologist Vivien Sommer Receives Funding from DFG's Emmy Noether Programme

For a long time, Europe thought it was on the road to unification. Noticeable restrictions on mobility at intra-European borders were seen as a relic of the past. More recently, however, disruptive events such as the coronavirus pandemic and large-scale refugee movements have led to borders becoming more of an issue again. They were already present in the memories of people in border regions. From 2024, a new junior research group at the IRS will be investigating the "border memory" of the local population in four European border regions and exploring how it has been shaped over the course of history. more info

01. November | 2023 | News
Project on the Utilisation of "Nomadic Architecture" in the Soviet Union in Preparation

On 1 October 2023 the historian of architecture Ksenia Litvinenko joined the IRS as a Fellow within the Leibniz Research Alliance “Values of the Past”. Under the mentorship of Monika Motylińska, she is in the process of developing a research project titled “Resourcification of Nomadic Indigenous Heritage in the Soviet Projects of Mobile Architecture”. The project will explore how the Soviet Union sought to utilise “Nomadic Architecture” to create mobile settlements for workers in the oil and gas industries in Siberia. more info

04. September | 2023 | News

In the history of the Cold War, the Global South often appears only as a theatre of bloc politics between East and West. In recent research, voices from Africa and Asia have been noted, but little is known about their interconnections. To shed light on these, the collaborative project "Crafting Entanglements: Afro-Asian Pasts of the Global Cold War", starting in July of 2023, looks at student and women's networks, media entanglements through radio stations and film festivals, and the divided city of Berlin as a site of South-South connections. more info

01. September | 2023 | News

The economic geographer Suntje Schmidt was appointed W2 Professor of Applied Economic Geography by the President of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) on 29 August 2023. The appointment was made jointly with the IRS, where she has headed the Research Area "Economics and Civil Society" since 2022. more info

28. August | 2023 | News

Since June 2023, the Open-Access-journal “Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning” is part of the database Scopus. The journal, which is published jointly by five member organizations of the Research Network “Spatial Knowledge for Society and Environment (Leibniz R)”, has thus reached a major milestone. more info

14. August | 2023 | News

For its commitment to open access to knowledge and information, the IRS library was awarded the Open Library Badge. The Open Library Badge initiative aims to reward libraries that promote openness in science and society. It seeks to make corresponding offers and activities visible. Openness in this context entails the removal of access barriers, the promotion of participation and the commitment to transparency. 26 libraries in German-speaking countries have received the badge in its current iteration. more info

© Gerd Altmann/Pixabay
19. April | 2023 | News

The intensive interactions of digitalisation and spatial development are the focus of the Spatial Science Colloquium 2023 (SSC2023), an event hosted by the Leibniz Research Network “Spatial Knowledge for Society and Environment – Leibniz R”. For the first time, the SSC will take place on two days: 4 July is an online event aimed at an international scientific audience. Day 2 on 5 July will be a face-to-face event in Berlin dedicated to the application-oriented exchange between science, politics and practice. Registration for the event is now open. more info

Postwertkennzeichen der Deutschen Post, 85 Pfennige mit Motiv Schloss Rheinsberg, 1986. Quelle: Museum digital. URL: https://themator.museum-digital.de/ausgabe/showthema.php?m_tid=1868&tid=2211&ver=standalone.
23. March | 2023 | News
Website urban-authenticity.eu Goes Live

The baroque city church, a Wilhelminian villa, a park - such buildings are considered "authentic" and representative of cities. But what about buildings from more recent history, especially the history of the GDR? The research project "Urban Authenticity" has investigated processes of authentication and now presents the results on an interactive website. It documents the history of building and discourse on the basis of over 50 examples, mainly in Berlin-Brandenburg. Not only buildings in Berlin and Potsdam are presented, but also numerous examples in rural Brandenburg. These tell stories of eradication, but also of the preservation of built local identity. more info

20. March | 2023 | News

Research-led policy and societal advice has gained enormous importance in recent years. Political decisions are increasingly based on diverse empirical research results and expert opinions. However, searching for these advisory documents can be tedious and time-consuming, as they are scattered on various websites and often cannot be searched specifically. For this reason, the Repository for Policy Documents (REPOD) is now being launched. With REPOD, a digital repository is being established that makes advisory documents searchable in a targeted manner across disciplines and ensures uniform quality assurance. The goal is to create an information and advisory infrastructure for policy-makers and society by the end of 2023 that will make the transfer of knowledge from research much easier. more info

Photo: Phil Aicken/unsplash.com, Portrait: Veikko Somerpuro
20. December | 2022 | News
21st IRS International Lecture on Society and Space with Sami Moisio, University of Helsinki

The 21st International Lecture of the IRS addressed the topic of the ‘Colonial Geopolitics of the „Global“ Knowledge Economy’. In the talk, Professor Sami Moisio of the University of Helsinki proposed to debunk economic centered perspectives on the knowledge economy by advancing a geopolitical understanding of the knowledge economy as a political productive ‘technology-force’. Or in other words: as a performative vision of the future which valorizes certain types of knowledge as key drivers of economic growth. This is an important lens to look through, as it can help to highlight how the distribution and control of knowledge underlying the expansion of capitalism – through high technology sectors, start-up entrepreneurs, universities, consultancies, international organizations, nation states, local states etc. – is geographically unevenly distributed. more info

26. October | 2022 | News

On 19 September 2022, the symposium and final conference on the BMBF-funded research project "From Shrinkage to Immigration. New Perspectives for Peripheral Large Housing Estates", or "StadtumMig" for short, took place in Berlin. Together with the Institute for Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IÖR) in Dresden, the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM) and the B.B.S.M. Brandenburgische Beratungsgesellschaft für Stadterneuerung und Modernisierung mbH, the IRS had investigated local integration policies, open space development, the need for adaptation of the social infrastructure, the prospects for people to stay and the opening of urban societies to newly arrived refugees in large housing estates in eastern Germany. The project has now entered a two-year implementation and continuation phase. more info

29. September | 2022 | News
A Look Back at the International IRS Summer School 2022

The five-day summer school "The Socialist City: Planning, Transformation and Aftermath" at the beginning of August 2022 dealt with matters of urban planning and housing construction from a comparative perspective. Participants discussed both urban planning and housing policy issues in the context of the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia and with counter-examples from France. Excursions in former East Berlin to the focal points of urban planning and architecture in Karl-Marx-Allee (former Stalinallee), monument protection (Nikolaiviertel and Gendarmenmarkt) and state surveillance (Hohenschönhausen) gave the researchers additional insights into the topic. more info

Foto: New Africa/stock.adobe.com
01. September | 2022 | News

Media professionals interested in the development of cities, villages and regions now have the opportunity to work for two months at a spatial research-oriented Leibniz institute on a topic of their choice. They have the resources of the institution at their disposal for research. In addition, they can get to know spatial research activities from the inside in close exchange with scientists. The work is remunerated by a scholarship funded by the Leibniz Association. The first host institution is the Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association (ARL) in Hanover. more info

14. June | 2022 | News
Looking Back on the 2022 IRS Spring Academy "Spaces of Infection"

For the first time since the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic, the IRS Spring Academy took place again in Erkner and Berlin at the end of May 2022. The event series is aimed at international doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in the interdisciplinary field of spatial research. They get the opportunity to work intensively together on a topic, to exchange ideas across disciplines and to network. With its special mix of formats, the Spring Academy addresses the needs of researchers in the early stages of their careers. The theme of the Spring Academy 2022 was "Spaces of Infection". The Robert Koch Institute was the local partner. more info

29. March | 2022 | News

Since 2018, the ExTrass project of the IRS research group Urban Sustainability Transformations has been researching how active German cities – especially medium-sized cities and smaller large cities – are in climate policy: What they are doing to adapt to increasing extreme weather events, but also to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In cooperation with the University of Potsdam and other partners, the team developed both a quantitative overview and detailed qualitative case studies. Now a two-year transfer phase has begun, in which the ExTrass research results will be translated even more strongly into recommendations for planning and municipal policy practice. more info

28. February | 2022 | News

We are shocked by the illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, which was launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin. We are deeply affected by the suffering inflicted on the people of Ukraine. We are also deeply concerned for colleagues, friends and family members who are personally in danger because of the war in Ukraine. The invasion, long prepared by the Russian leadership, is also an attack on the values of freedom, democracy and human dignity that are important to us. As members of the international scientific community, we stand up for non-violence, self-determination and truth-based discourse - principles that are fundamentally violated by the belligerent aggression. more info

07. February | 2022 | News

More than any other pandemic before, COVID-19 has been measured and mapped. However, the use of comparatively detailed data has not only proved to be a pillar of pandemic control, but also opens up new possibilities for research into epidemic outbreaks. It is striking that although the course of the COVID-19 pandemic corresponds to the known temporal wave pattern, these waves spread spatially in different ways. The new DFG-funded research project of the IRS “Socio-Spatial Diffusion of COVID-19 in Germany (CoDiff)” has been working on this point since the beginning of February 2022 in order to gain new insights into the spatially non-linear course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers involved in the project are using the existing tempo-spatial data situation to gain new insights into the spatial spread of epidemic outbreaks. more info

26. January | 2022 | News

At the end of 2021, the Franco-German Historians Committee awarded the dissertation prize to historian Daniel Hadwiger, a researcher at the IRS, for his study “Nationale Solidarität und ihre Grenzen. Die deutsche Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt und der französische Secours national im Zweiten Weltkrieg“ (“National Solidarity and its Borders. The German National Socialist People's Welfare and the French Secours national in the Second World War”). In the presence of the Board of the Historians Committee, the Director of the Centre Marc Bloch, Prof. Jakob Vogel, and the representative of the Science Department of the French Embassy in Berlin, Dr. Bernard Ludwig, the prize was ceremoniously awarded at the Centre Marc Bloch on 18 November 2021. more info

Foto: maimu/stock.adobe.com
10. January | 2022 | News

At the turn of the year 2021/2022, changes in the organisation and direction of IRS research will take effect. They are the result of a strategy process ("IRS 2025") that we have been conducting over the past two years. As the most important change, starting January 1, 2022, the IRS will no longer organise its social science research from a spatial perspective in five Research Departments, but in three consolidated Research Areas. more info

14. December | 2021 | News
Methodological Implications for Digitalization Research in Rural-Peripheral Areas

For almost two years now, researchers are confronted with new challenges in adapting their research to the transforming socio-spatial conditions. Previously planned research designs lose their validity, field approaches have to be redefined, social actors in public space sometimes remain invisible. This is often particularly true for research in peripheral spaces, as not only are planned field research suddenly replaced by other field access strategies on the home computer, but also the digital equipment of these spaces is often less adequate. more info

13. October | 2021 | News
Interview with Early Stage Researchers Federica Ammaturo and Chen Gao on the CORAL Innovative Training Network’s Introductory Event

In September 2021, the members of the EU-funded Marie Sklodowska Curie Innovative Training Network (2021-2024) “CORAL ” met online for their one-week Introductory Event. For the first time, all 15 newly recruited Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) employed by the network’s nine partner organisations were able to meet and exchange. At the IRS and supervised by Suntje Schmidt, Federica Ammaturo and Chen Gao are currently starting their research on the roles of rural collaborative workspaces in regional development and in entrepreneurial ecosystems respectively. Here, they share their impressions of the event and their experiences of starting work in an EU-network – and in almost-rural Erkner, where the IRS is located. more info

29. September | 2021 | News

An article co-authored by IRS researcher Peter Eckersley, together with Charlotte Burns (Department of Politics, University of Sheffield) and Paul Tobin (School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester), has been awarded the 2020 “Best Paper Prize” by the Journal of European Public Policy. The paper, “EU Environmental Policy in Times of Crisis”, quantifies the level of ambition of European environmental legislation and tracks the decline of ambition following the global financial crisis of 2009. more info

Foto: A.Savin (Wikimedia Commons · WikiPhotoSpace) - Eigenes Werk, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63986120
10. September | 2021 | News

On 1 September 2021, the new Leibniz Research Association "Value of the Past" began its work. It unites 20 institutions of the Leibniz Association, ranging from institutes of history and cultural studies to social and environmental sciences and research museums. The IRS is represented in the network with its Research Area “Contemporary History and Archive”. more info

19. July | 2021 | News
Reflections on the International and Transdisciplinary Conference “Emerging from Emergencies. Exploring CRISIS as a Dynamic Opportunity Structure“

Brexit, climate change, armed conflicts - are we really living in times of permanent crisis? And what does this imply for the way society should deal with crises? How can crises be used productively to learn in the long term? These questions and others were addressed at the online conference "Emerging from Emergencies". The conference opened up a perspective on a more proactive, more reflective and more open approach to crises. more info

14. June | 2021 | News

Researching the connection between social change and spatial transformation - that is the mission of the IRS. In the future, the Institute will increasingly focus on disruptive forms of change, on crises, conflicts, technological and economic upheavals, because these increasingly shape the actions of social actors. more info

Foto: Kara/stock.adobe.com
10. March | 2021 | News

The Leibniz Research Alliance "Energy Transition" combines the expertise of 20 Leibniz institutes in the field of energy research. Under the title "Energy Futures - Emerging Pathways in an Uncertain World!", the final conference of the alliance took place from 22 to 26 February 2021. Due to the pandemic, the event originally planned for May 2020 had already been postponed once by one year. Now it was held as a purely online conference. It attracted a broad international audience of around 500 participants and was able to attract renowned keynote speakers such as Benjamin Sovacool (University of Sussex) and Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard University), who have a significant influence on the field of social science energy and climate research. more info

Foto und Logo: European Creative Hubs Network Association
12. February | 2021 | News

Coworking spaces, FabLabs and Maker Spaces have so far been predominantly found in large cities. But such "collaborative workspaces" are increasingly being established in rural areas, where they provide access to digital technologies and other work resources. A new EU-funded Innovative Training Network (ITN) is now studying the effects of such places. The IRS is involved with its research area "Economy and Civil Society". more info

10. February | 2021 | News

The IRS welcomes Expressions of Interest of excellent postdoctoral researchers for Horizon Europe MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships. The successful candidate will apply jointly with a supervisor from IRS to the European Commission Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme. The candidate will receive dedicated support from a senior researcher, as well as IRS Research Management and Communication office to develop their proposal and application for submission to the European Commission by 15th of September 2021 more info

Map of offshore canpus locations. axeptDESIGN, Rupert Maier
01. September | 2020 | News

Increasingly, universities are offering teaching not only on their home campus or online, but also in international branch locations. These "Offshore Campuses" are often designed as glamorous science cities that are marketed commercially. With the names of well-known universities as brands, they attract students. A scientifically sound overview of the number, location and origin of these institutions at city level has not been available until now. Now, the Junior Research Group "TRANSEDU" of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) has presented an overall data collection. more info

23. July | 2020 | News

Directly next to the tower of the baroque Garrison Church in Potsdamer Dortustraße stands the building of the data processing center of the Volkseigener Betrieb “Machine Computing”, completed in 1971. The Garrison Church, which was damaged in World War II and blown up in 1968, is currently being rebuilt with public and private funds. The “Rechenzentrum”, on the other hand, currently still used for cultural purposes, is a candidate for demolition. Why? In June 2020, the international project network "“UrbAuth”, led by the Research Area “Contemporary History and Archive” of the IRS, began work. The project aims to clarify how cities today attempt to establish historical authenticity in their building policies, and why certain epochs are repeatedly used as points of identification, while the traces of other epochs disappear from the cityscape. more info

Foto: Doug Saunders
19. July | 2020 | News

Since 2015, international migration to Germany has become a top topic of many political debates. In many East German cities, these debates are also taking place against the background of a growing concentration of refugees in certain residential areas. Especially peripheral prefabricated housing estates are currently developing into new "arrival neighbourhoods". This development raises many new questions in planning practice: Are the quarters in question developing into stepping stones that facilitate the integration of immigrants - or are new "ghettos" emerging here? What new tasks and needs arise at the neighbourhood level? How is this development processed politically? Two events were held at the IRS in July 2020, during which the challenges of arrivals' neighbourhoods were intensively discussed. more info

Grafik: jan_S/stock.adobe.com
24. June | 2020 | News

With its new, in-house online publication series "IRS Dialog", the IRS has created a framework for publishing research reports and working papers, as well as for stating its position in debates related to spatial-development policy. The first issue has now been released: a research report from the project “Stadtquartier 4.0” (“Urban Quarter 4.0”), showing how experts view the prospects of a reduction in urban delivery traffic. more info

04. May | 2020 | News

Who pursues social goals if the state withdraws and a purely profit-oriented model doesn’t take hold? A possible answer is: social enterprise. That is, businesses that pursue social goals by entrepreneurial means. Much hope is vested in these in both rural and urban areas. On behalf of the State of Brandenburg, the IRS is currently developing a structured overview of the status and potential for development of social businesses in Brandenburg, as well as of the assistance they require. more info

Prof. Ute Lehrer von der York University in Toronto bei der 14. IRS International Lecture on Society and Space
28. February | 2020 | News

In 2019, the IRS hosted 12 international guest researchers – more than ever before. This is the result of the institute's long-term strategy of increasing its international visibility and promoting international cooperation. Guest researchers participating in or contributing to unique IRS programmes such as the IRS Spring Academy, IRS Seminars and IRS International Lectures allows them to engage in dialogue with IRS scholars and other experts. more info

Maridav/stock.adobe.com
13. February | 2020 | News

The former Research department "Institutional Change and Regional Public Goods" research department examines fundamental socio-ecological transformation processes. It seeks to produce in-depth analyses to make sense of the complex societal challenges we face today. But that is easier said than done. Should we apply a bird's eye perspective to study broad causal relationships? Or instead zoom in and focus on individual cases and what makes them unique? On January 27, 2020, renowned scholars Gretchen Bakke, Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe attended a departmental workshop to discuss these and other questions. more info

Foto: Anke Harwardt-Feye
06. August | 2019 | News

A special kind of business is meant when one speaks of startups – one that is internationally positioned and growth oriented, and which is situated in branches such as the digital, high-tech, or creative economies. Such enterprises require special conditions, summarised for some time now under the label of the “entrepreneurial ecosystem”. At the Herrenhausen Symposium “Temporal Dynamics in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems” on 1 and 2 July in Hannover, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, leading international entrepreneurship scholars discussed the current state of knowledge on entrepreneurial ecosystems. more info

18. July | 2019 | News

From 4 to 7 June 2019, together with the Design Research Lab at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin, the IRS hosted its third Spring Academy, “Investigating Space(s): Current Theoretical and Methodological Approaches”. The format transformed Erkner into a location for creative encounters between many international junior researchers. Here we offer an overview. more info

Prof. Dr. Oliver Ibert und Wissenschaftsministerin Dr. Martina Münch bei der Ernennung im Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur Brandenburg in Potsdam am 24. Juni 2019. Foto: MWFK
Prof. Dr. Oliver Ibert und Wissenschaftsministerin Dr. Martina Münch bei der Ernennung im Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur Brandenburg in Potsdam am 24. Juni 2019. Foto: MWFK
01. July | 2019 | News

IRS has a new director. On June 24th, Brandenburg's minister of science, research and culture, Dr. Martina Münch, appointed the economic geographer Prof. Oliver Ibert to the professorship in Socio-Spatial Transformation at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg. This professorship and the position of IRS director are linked through a joint appointment by BTU and IRS. Ibert took office on July 1st. more info

Alice Bobee, Mark Schulze, Kris Olds, Tim Rottleb, Bas van Heur, Neil Coe, Sarah Hall, Francis Collins und Jana Kleibert
08. May | 2019 | News

Now, you can learn about research on society and space by listening online. On May 8th 2019, the new IRS podcast "Society@Space“ was launched with its first episode "Welcome to Nottingham, Malaysia“. In it, three internationally renowned guests of IRS, who did research on the globalisation of higher education, talk about their work: Sarah Hall (Nottingham, UK), Francis Collings (Waikato, New Zealand) amd Kris Olds (Madison, USA) were in Erkner in early January of 2019 following an invitation by Jana Kleibert (IRS) to coach three PhD students working in the Leibniz Junior Research Group TRANSEDU. more info