Staff

Since June 2025, Paul Seidel has been a research associate in the “Politics and Planning” Research Area of the “Urban Politics” Research Group. In the context of the new flagship project “Urban Heat Transition,” he is investigating large housing estates.

Lilli Rast joined IRS as a research associate in the “Historical Urban and Spatial Research” Group within the “Contemporary History and Archive” Research Area in May 2025. As a doctoral candidate, she is working on the exploratory application of the thick mapping method in contemporary history.

Judith Lange has been a research associate in the research area “Economy and Civil Society” and is developing a dissertation project as part of the DFG-funded Emmy Noether Junior Research Group “Borders and Memory”. She also works at the Department of Spatial Transformation and Social Research at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg.

Eva Gajek is a historian specializing in the social, economic, and cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her research connects questions of social inequality with spatial analysis, elite studies, and the history of wealth. Starting in the research area "Contemporary History and Archive" in May 2025, she will co-lead the research project “Where the Rich Live: Mapping Villa Neighborhoods and Cultures of Wealth in Germany’s Long Twentieth Century” (RichMap) at the IRS. The project is part of the Leibniz Cooperative Excellence Programme and explores the spatial dimensions of wealth and social inequality in modern Germany.