News

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

arge parts of the old building stock in the GDR were in catastrophic condition in the late 1980s. The state leadership did not succeed in preserving these inner-city neighbourhoods of old buildings on a large scale. In the last years of the GDR, citizens' groups, mostly under the umbrella of the church or the Kulturbund, fought against this decay. The work of these citizens' groups as well as other reform actors, their successes as well as how they and the old towns were dealt with in the transformation period after 1989 are analysed in an anthology co-edited by Harald Engler and with the participation of other IRS staff members of the "Stadtwende" project. more info

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

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

Climate change is not perceived, understood and evaluated in the same way everywhere. Accordingly, the practices of dealing with it differ considerably. Today, such climate-cultural differences are found less between nation states than between different groups of actors and socio-political coalitions. A new anthology edited by Thorsten Heimann, Jamie Sommer, Margarethe Kusenbach and Gabriela Christmann focuses on such "climate cultural formations" and their great diversity in North America and Europe: from cultures of climate adaptation in rural areas of Southern Europe and among the indigenous population of Northern Europe to culture-specific strategies for more climate protection in German cities or in the southern states of the USA. more info

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

Two new articles from the Research Group Urban Sustainability Transformations shed light on how cities are becoming pioneers in climate policy, both in climate protection and in climate adaptation. Instead of the metropolises often mentioned in this role, such as Paris, the authors take a look at smaller cities in Germany. In doing so, they show that even cities with difficult starting conditions can find their way into the top group. more info

Matthias Bernt, acting head of the Research Area Politics and Planning, examined gentrification processes in London, Berlin and St. Petersburg comparatively in his habilitation project "Gentrification and Housing Policy". He paid special attention to the effects of different forms of regulation and policies of the housing market, both on investments in the housing stock and on the displacement of low-income households. From his findings, Bernt developed the concept of the "comodification gap", which takes an institutionalist perspective on gentrification. Now his habilitation thesis is published as a monograph by Wiley. more info

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

In their newly published article "Choose France! Containment, Circulation and Postcolonial (Dis)Continuities in Transnational Education", Alice Bobée and Jana Kleibert show how French offshore campuses in Francophone Africa on the one hand implement French migration and higher education policies and on the other hand increasingly adapt to economic competitive pressure and the mobility desires of paying students. In doing so, they are imitating "Anglo-Saxon" market-oriented strategies. The article appeared in the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education. more info

IRS doctoral researcher Alica Repenning is investigating the spaces of creative work in fashion design in her PhD project in the research area “Economy and Civil Society”. Her paper “Workspaces of Mediation: How Digital Platforms Shape Practices, Spaces and Places of Creative Work” has now been published in the journal “Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (TSEG)”. The analysis of Berlin fashion designers shows that they move in a complex web of digitalised work spaces, work locations and work practices. Digital platforms such as Instagram help to determine this network through their structures and mechanisms. more info

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

Especially in countries striving to transform themselves from a commodity economy to a knowledge economy, the establishment of "transnational education hubs", i.e. clusters of branch locations of international universities, is a popular location policy tool. But hopes for a transformative effect on the local economy are not always fulfilled. In its new policy paper "Developing Successful Transnational Education Hubs: Key Challenges for Policy Makers" (IRS Dialog 4/2022), the IRS Junior Research Group TRANSEDU has identified the key challenges and formulated recommendations. more info

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Universities are increasingly investing in offshore locations, partly to generate revenue in the form of tuition fees, partly to achieve reputational gains. There are currently almost 500 offshore campuses worldwide. At the same time, campuses are also being closed every year. The Junior Research Group TRANSEDU, headed by Jana Kleibert, investigates the internationalisation strategies of universities. Under the title "Strategy First: Ten Questions to Answer before Starting an International Campus", Jana Kleibert, Tim Rottleb, Marc Schulze and Alice Bobée have now presented a policy paper that addresses university leaders and political decision-makers and analyses the risks of international campus developments. more info

Under the title "Nationale Solidarität und ihre Grenzen. Die deutsche 'Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt' und der französische 'Secours national' im Zweiten Weltkrieg" (National Socialist People's Welfare in Germany and the French 'Secours national' in the Second World War), the Stuttgart-based Franz Steiner Verlag published the dissertation by Daniel Hadwiger, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department for Historical Research. In his dissertation, Hadwiger examined the political instrumentalisation of welfare in the Nazi state and in the Vichy regime in a transnational comparison. more info

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

Europe has been cooperating across borders for a long time. Since its existence, the EU has initiated numerous cross-border cooperations. But are such formal cooperative relationships also brought to life by the local population? Political scientist Peter Ulrich examined this question in his doctoral project using four European example regions. His dissertation was recently published as a book. more info

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

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

Over several years, the research unit "Dynamics of Communication, Knowledge and Spatial Development" has been researching how social innovations are driven in rural areas, what problems they can solve and how they can be supported politically. Now it is publishing recommendations for practice; on the one hand in the form of a German-language policy paper, on the other hand in the form of an English-language practice manual. more info

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

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

The IRS welcomes Expressions of Interests of excellent postdoctoral researchers with an outstanding academic track record and a background in one of the following disciplines: economic and social geography, urban and regional sociology, political science, urban and regional planning, and contemporary history. The successful candidate will apply jointly with a supervisor from IRS to the European Commission Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship Scheme. more info

A new special issue of the journal “Innovation” guest-edited by Timmo Krüger (IRS) and Victoria Pellicer-Sifres (Universitat Politècnica de València) addresses power and conflict in societal responses to ecologic crises, particularly in efforts to transform energy systems, as well as approaches to study said responses. Ironically, given the remit of their publication outlet, the editors make clear from the outset that they believe innovation, more precisely social innovation, is not a concept that helps in understanding or advancing the necessary social and ecological transformations. Instead they point at alternative economic logics, such as degrowth, which do not promise alternative paths towards modernization and development, but rather alternatives to modernisation. The collection of eight articles emerged from encounters fostered by the Leibniz Research Alliance on Energy Transitions, and reflects the growing interest of transformation research, carried out at the IRS and elsewhere, in the idea of degrowth or postgrowth economies. more info

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

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

On 15 June 2020, IRS begins to ease to ease the restrictions imposed due to the corona pandemic. Amid falling infection numbers and a gradual easing of legal and administrative contact restrictions, it implements a stage concept which allows it to respond flexibly to the further unfolding of the corona pandemic. Staff will be able to work in their offices to a limited degree. However, the Library as well as the Scientific Collections remain closed to external users in this stage. As yet, events with external participants are not possible either. more info

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

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

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

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

New wind-power projects have been a regular cause of local protest in recent times. But what determines whether resistance forms and how movements opposing wind power operate? Are only the local conditions and circumstances of particular projects decisive factors, or does the respective national context – such as political debate, or specific systems of regulation – also play a role? Andrea Bues has been examining this issue, comparing anti-wind movements in Brandenburg and in the Canadian province of Ontario. Her book “Social Movements against Wind Power in Canada and Germany: Energy Policy and Contention” has now been published by Routledge. more info

Digital visualizations have become an integral part of urban planning. Building projects are sometimes announced years before the ground-breaking ceremony with 3D simulations that appear increasingly realistic. But what is really new about how today, with the help of digital technologies, future images of cities are created? Does planning therefore function fundamentally differently?  These are the questions addressed in the Special Issue "Visual Communication in Urban Design and Planning: The Impact of Mediatisation(s) on the Construction of Urban Futures", published in the journal "Urban Planning" (Open Access). Guest editors are Gabriela Christmann, Christoph Bernhardt and Jörg Stollmann. more info

The spread of Covid-19 is a spatial phenomenon. Maps and statistics record the degrees of impact of different countries and regions, hotspots are identified and the influences of mobility practices such as holiday travel are critically examined. Thus, geography can make a significant contribution to understanding and combating the coronavirus pandemic. In a new special issue of the Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, the guest editors Manuel B. Aalbers (KU Leuven), Niels Beerepoot and Martijn Gerritsen (both Universiteit van Amsterdam) have collected 26 contributions from different sub-areas of geography. The IRS is represented with two contributions. more info

Leading the economy and society out of the carbon age into a climate-friendly future requires more than just a transformation of energy production towards renewable energy sources. As the current debate on a "Green New Deal", for instance, shows, there is a need for a fundamentally new way of productively using human labor, technology and investment capital. Geographical research can show how such transformations take place in space - how they are shaped by existing structures and how new things are created at different scales. Such a research perspective is developed in the new themed issue "New Energy Spaces" in the journal "Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space", which was developed with significant participation from the IRS. First research results, also in part from the IRS, are presented. more info

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

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

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

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

Cities are routinely eulogized as harbingers of progress and emancipation, as the locus of innovation and creativity. And, in fact, the historical record of cities in engendering artistic, scientific or societal creativity from the ancient Greece polis over Renaissance Florence, Modern Art Paris to New York’s ‘Warhol Economy’ is impressive. More recently, though, discords began to mingle with the harmonious choir praising the allegedly greatest invention of humanity. The fixation with the unique affordances of urban places, as the critique maintains, has systematically impoverished our understanding of creativity in the periphery. To rectify this urban bias, a veritable stream of research initiatives has been launched more recently to push the focus of scholarly debate on creativity from center to periphery, from the urban to the rural. In addition to an international conference in Berlin on November 21 and 22, the issue is addressed in a special issue of "Industry and Innovation" guest edited by Gernot Graber (University of the Built Environment and Metropolitan Development, Hamburg) and Oliver Ibert (IRS and Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus). more info

Coworking spaces, maker spaces and other kinds of ‘labs’ are typically seen as an urban phenomenon. Indeed, most of them are located in larger cities. However, they also exist in the countryside, and as an element in a comprehensive strategy, they could potentially help stabilizing rural areas suffering from demographic and economic decline. During an IRS seminar on March 19th 2019, Ignasi Capdevila from PSB Paris School of Business presented the case of a rural coworking initiative from the Spanish region of Catalonia. more info

Recently, the federal commission on “Equal Living Conditions” reported considerable regional inequalities in Germany. Rural regions, in particular, suffer from poor education and employment opportunities, lower incomes and shortages in the provision of public and private services. These observations, however, are not specific for Germany. Many rural regions across Europe face challenges such as a lack of medical practices, village shops, schools and public service provision. In this situation, expectations rest on a relatively new type of organization: social enterprises. A new book explores the role of social enterprises in rural spaces. more info

The nexus between migration and urban policy is a controversial topic. How can cities respond to immigration? Manfred Kühn (IRS) and Sybille Münch, Junior Professor of Theory of Public Policy at Leuphana University Lüneburg, together guest-edited a special issue of the journal disP- The Planning Review (disP 218 - 3/2019), focussing on migration and urban policy. more info