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.

Claudia Roth has headed the Research Support and Communication department at the IRS since July 2025. A trained journalist, she was most recently Deputy Head of Communications at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.