Whose City, Whose Spaces? Where and What is Space in your Thesis?

Anna Steigemann (Regensburg)

Beginning:

Tuesday, 26 May 2026 14:00

End:

Thursday, 28 May 2026 13:00

This hands-on workshop will introduce the PhD candidates to different multi-scalar and multi-perspective approaches to writing an Area Studies dissertation – with a strong focus on space. Based on the doctoral candidates’ projects and my inputs, the seminar will bring together different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on space while introducing the participants to multi-scalar techniques for collecting, interpreting, and analyzing qualitative data. With this the doctoral candidates can reflect on and discuss their wider methodological approaches and data collection across the different Area Studies disciplines. For this, the seminar requires the doctoral students to prepare and share their current state and particularly the current fieldwork and data collection challenges in advance. This will allow us to zoom in and collectively discuss your individual approaches and takes on multi-scalarity, their field work plans, discuss ethical issues around doorkeepers, sampling, field work interaction with your research partners, how to protect and use sensitive data and information for your further work, next strategic and analytic steps, et cetera. Furthermore, this hands-on workshop is an experiment, an open platform, a discussion space, where PhD candidates can address in a ‘safer space’ all kinds of challenges during ‘doing a PhD’. I am not your supervisor, I am there to help you to improve the theoretical and empirical parts of your PhD, with my expertise as a sociologist and spatial researcher. In addition, the workshop aims to (re-) introduce you to different multi-scalar and multi-perspective approaches to writing an Area Studies dissertation.

Requirements:

please submit by May 16 via email to anna.steigemann@ur.de (one document).

- 1 page expose (framework and research question(s)) incl. how space matters in your work and how you define it

- 1 page methodological approach

- max 1 page current state of the art & timeline of your thesis/research

1 page current methodological and practical challenges