DFG Research Training Group "Urban future-making" started in HamburgUrban future-making: Professional agency across time and scale

22 April 2022, by CSS

Photo: Josè Maria Sava on Unsplash

CSS member Prof. Dr. Manderscheid (Department of Social Economics) and Prof. Dr. Müller (Department of Social Sciences), under the direction of Prof. Dr. Grubbauer (HafenCity University Hamburg (HCU)), have applied to the DFG for a research training group on the topic of "Urban future-making: Professional agency across time and scale". The research training group officially started its work on April 1 with twelve PhD students and three postdoctoral researchers. Urban growth, climate change, resource exploitation and currently the Corona pandemic are pressing global problems and raise unresolved issues: cities and urban centers are the places where the future is shaped and solutions to problems are initiated. The aim of the research training group is to investigate the agency of experts in the built environment in the face of pressing challenges of transformative change.

Particularly, the project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and carried out by HCU in cooperation with Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and the Universität Hamburg (UHH). It is the first cooperation within the framework of a research training group between the three universities. The group has a strong interdisciplinary and international profile. Doctoral and postdoctoral researchers from the social sciences and built environment disciplines will explore laboratories, architectures, and infrastructures in different contexts around the globe and how they serve as key sites, objects, and vehicles for shaping urban futures.

A press release from HCU can be found here [in German].