#talktime

Change and the City

How to understand cities? Anna Steigemann, Professor for Sociological Dimensions of Space at the University of Regensburg, explores them by walking through streets, talking to passers-by, observing how migrants, queer communities, and people without housing live, how they create new spaces or change existing neighborhoods. Her approaches are actor and practice based. She also researches critically participation. "One of my strengths is that I feel social change and urban transformation very quickly," she says.

As a result, the scholar is no longer satisfied to simply observe cities. She prefers action research, combining basic and applied research in an intervening way. "I want my knowledge to find its way into city government and civil society. I want to change cities.” Berlin is the center of Anna Steigemann 's life; she has lived there for 22 years. The researcher feels at home in the German capital. Her Kiez? Kreuzberg, where she is also a regular at the feminist bookstore around the corner. Somehow, it's also a love-hate relationship that many people have with the cities they live in, says Anna Steigemann. "There is no other city that I know so much about, both personally and professionally.” Berlin also serves as the location of her EU research project Fairville. This project aims to address embedded urban inequalities and the challenges they pose to democracy in large cities and urban regions.

Urbanization and Globalization

Anna Steigemann studied social sciences, gender studies, geography and urban planning. Her research interests include urbanization, processes of inclusion and exclusion, and social and spatial transformations. She considers herself a spatial researcher and sociologist on the same time, with a lot of involvement in citizen science projects. Through her research, she wants people to be empowered and administrations to gain new perspectives. For instance, migration and people's efforts to migrate are becoming increasingly important in this. "Today, more people in the world are migrating than staying in one place. Even if political actors refuse to see this as a normality," says Anna Steigemann.

The scholar examines urban-rural relations, translocal practices, transformations toward sustainability, and diversification processes. This includes the massive migratory movements in the Global South in recent decades. They have received little research attention in social sciences, states Anna Steigemann. "Every city in Africa is growing at a rate that no European city could match. Accordingly, there is a great deal of knowledge, both among administrators and city dwellers, about how to plan or even govern such a self-made city that is reconfiguring itself every day". UR's Department for Interdisciplinary and Multiscalar Area Studies (DIMAS) is ideally suited for her approach: in addition to the well-established research on Eastern Europe, the DIMAS professorships created in recent years now also bring additional expertise on the USA and Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa.

Trends and Avantgarde

The most inspiring city ever? For Steigemann, aside from Berlin, it's New York City. But she also enjoys Manchester, Marseille, and Munich, where she grew up. Or Naples, where one can find the best pizza in the world, Anna’s favorite dish since childhood. But then, again, it is New York. The fact that the city famously never sleeps doesn’t bother Anna Steigemann. She sometimes prefers to work from 10 pm to 2 am. NYC sets trends and it is always facing new challenges, both willingly and unwillingly.
"Despite high rents and capitalization, the city continues to attract a certain type of person from all over the world, provided they can afford it and can get a residence permission”, says Anna Steigemann. The urban researcher is convinced, that its mix of people continues to make NYC an absolute avant-garde place in terms of social trends, both positive and negative. "It is extremely exciting to observe how spaces are configured, how they are negotiated, how they are created, what spatial and urban knowledge and experiences people bring with them when they come to this city".

Matters of Perspective

Recently, the researcher spent two months in Manchester and London with a fellowship at King's College. With the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Anna Steigemann exchanged ideas and worked with her colleagues there. They conducted research on queer spaces during the COVID pandemic. Their research, Anna Steigemann says, was also political.
“Are you looking for friction?” Yes, she does. “I do not shy away from conflict. It creates dynamic that bring about transformation. The only question is whether you deal with others fairly and correctly, with respect, with openness for other opinions.” Steigemann’s credo is multi-perspectivity. Being approachable, empathic, a good listener, this is what she describes as her strengths. “It's not a strategic tool for me to provoke conflict.”

What is most important to Anna Steigemann? Her friends and inner circle. Personal relationships are the constants in her life. "Not letting work invade every little area of my life is important to me.” She usually finishes her work week on Friday afternoon and starts again on Monday morning. During this time, Anna Steigemann does not read any emails. The same goes for her team. There are no different standards, she says. "In the US, people are very careful not to have meetings during care work times. I'm surprised how much of that is still the case in Germany." For the researcher, it is also about the symbolic effect: "You can do good science and work without working 80 hours a week.”