Anastasia Betsa
Research Associate | Contemporary History and Archive
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Anastasia Betsa joined the Research Area “Contemporary History and Archive” at the IRS as a research associate in the new lead project in November 2024. As part of this project, she works on her PhD thesis about the urbanisation of the soil in the Argentinian heartland of the humid pampas.

Anastasia Betsa previously graduated with a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Architecture from the RWTH Aachen and completed the M.A. Historical Urban Studies at Technische Universität Berlin. She worked in various architecture firms in Aachen and Rotterdam and was a research assistant in the Research Area since 2022. In her master's thesis, she investigated the role of a German construction company on the urban imaginaries of Buenos Aires in the first decades of the 20th century.

Projects

Ongoing Lead Projects

Lead project 01/2026 - 12/2029
Of Soil and Land – “Boden” as a neglected foundation of historical processes in the long 20th century

The Lead Project places “Boden” (the German term for soil, land and ground) at the centre of historical research as a so far neglected yet central aspect. Boden is understood as an open, historically evolved and contested category that cannot be analytically reduced to a single dimension. The development of a participatory glossary that documents the meaning and use of the term throughout historical change will reflect on this multivalence. more info

Ongoing Qualification Projects

Qualification project 11/2024 - 10/2028
Grounding Urbanisation: Soil Practices and City-Making in the Pampas (1875–1945)

This dissertation examines the role of land in the urbanisation of Buenos Aires. Its hypothesis is that land has been a driving force behind urbanisation, both through its physical characteristics and in the way it has been socially and culturally constructed. Anastasia Betsa examines land infrastructures and practices in the Argentine Pampas, as well as their ideological background, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. more info

Selected Publications by Year

2026
Betsa, A. (2026). Subterranean Imaginaries: The Buenos Aires Underground Through GEOPÉ’s Photography (1912–1938). Aedificare, 2025 - 2(18), 149-185. https://doi.org/10.48611/isbn.978-2-406-20517-3.p.0149
2025
Betsa, A. (2025). Book review of: Cupers, Kenny, The Earth That Modernism Built. Empire and the Rise of Planetary Design. H-Soz-u-Kult. https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-153969

Selected Publications by Type

Journal Article
Betsa, A. (2026). Subterranean Imaginaries: The Buenos Aires Underground Through GEOPÉ’s Photography (1912–1938). Aedificare, 2025 - 2(18), 149-185. https://doi.org/10.48611/isbn.978-2-406-20517-3.p.0149
Review in Journal
Betsa, A. (2025). Book review of: Cupers, Kenny, The Earth That Modernism Built. Empire and the Rise of Planetary Design. H-Soz-u-Kult. https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-153969

Talks

2025
Grounding Buenos Aires (1875–1940)

GUHP2 Berlin: Stretching the Limits of Global Urban History

July/11/2025
Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany