Selected Publications

German universities are less active in setting up campuses abroad compared to British or French universities, for example. However, some German universities are still expanding internationally and risk reproducing a neoliberal logic of educational commercialization. An article in the journal "Compare" highlights the correlations. more info

Cities need to prepare themselves for threats such as heatwaves and floods, in other words: become more resilient. But there are different ways of thinking about resilience. A new article looks at cities that are involved in a global network for resilience and compares cities in the "Global North" and the "Global South". The result: there are many similarities. However, there are differences as to whether resilience is seen more as a defence of the status quo or as a path to transformation. more info

What role did architecture play for the societies of countries in sub-Saharan Africa after they became independent? The Canadian Centre for Architecture coordinated a research project on this topic, to which IRS architecture historian Monika Monika Motylińska contributed. The volume "Fugitive Archives" shows the results. more info

Digital freelance platforms advertise flexibility, independence and access to a global labour market. But what does it mean to organise and position yourself in this environment? In her dissertation "Global Platform Work", cultural scientist Anna Oechslen sheds light on the everyday life of graphic designers who receive orders from India via digital platforms worldwide. The book was published open access by Campus. more info

An article by IRS researchers Andreas Kuebart and Martin Stabler recently published in the journal "Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology" looks at the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic at the level of German counties over time. The study shows: The first four waves of the pandemic were distributed very unevenly within Germany. However, even over long periods of time, the distribution remained surprisingly stable and the affected regions remained the same. more info

In addition to teaching and research, universities have a third mission: knowledge transfer. In a new paper in the journal “Local Economy”, Julia Stadermann and Suntje Schmidt report on Innovation Salons - a new transfer format that supports the emergence of novel problem solutions for societal challenges. In such salons, universities can work together with civil society on problem-driven innovations; for example, by co-developing the concept for a health centre in a rural area. more info

A recent IRS paper shows how university offshore campuses can affect the strategic positioning of cities. Tim Rottleb investigated the effects of the interplay between urban development policies and the internationalisation of universities in the Arab Gulf region. The study areas were the cities of Doha, Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah. more info

How can universities be anchor institutions for the development of cities and regions in their vicinity? This question continues to preoccupy decision-makers in politics and administration. Scientific literature shows that a strong regional anchoring of universities is not only important for regional development effects. A good regional anchoring also brings many advantages for universities and their core functions. In the meantime, however, it has also become apparent how universities are simultaneously expanding their purely local understanding of themselves and their role as actors in the course of internationalisation strategies: they are increasingly transforming themselves into institutions that act transregionally. A new paper shows which dimensions politics and administration should pay attention to in the field of tension between regional and trans-regional anchoring. 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

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