Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Urban Sociology

Welcome to the homepage of the Department for Urban and Regional Sociology at the Institute for Social Sciences of Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Here you can find all the department-related information you need.

Here you will find all the important information about the activities of the department in research and teaching.

News

Special issue on Emotions, the Rich and the Poor: Affective Hierarchies, Boundaries and Distinctions in Class Relations published

This special issue offers insights into sociological research at the intersection of emotions, social class and social inequality. Edited by Nina Margies and Elgen Sauerborn (FU Berlin), it brings together contributions from Mexico, Sweden, Latvia, Denmark and Germany that show how emotions are shaped by social hierarchies – and at the same time contribute to stabilising or changing them. For example, we learn about precarious food delivery workers in Riga who, despite class resentment, do not organise collectively, and about super-rich families in Germany who carefully manage their family emotions in order to preserve and legitimise their wealth across generations. Read more here in the journal Emotions and Society.

Nina Margies nominated for the Cultural Sociology Sage Prize for Innovation and/or Excellence 2025

Nina Margies has been nominated for this year's Sage Prize for Innovation and Excellence from the journal Cultural Sociology for her article ‘Making Sense of Change: Emotive-Cognitive Reframing of Young People in Post-crisis Spain’ (open access). Congratulations.

Study on body cameras used by Berlin police and fire brigade published

On behalf of the Berlin Senate Department for the Interior and Sport, we (Prof. Silvia von Steinsdorff, Prof. Anna-Bettina Kaiser, Prof. Talja Blokland, Dr. Nina Margies, Dr. Roman Hensel) investigated whether body cameras provide better protection for the fire brigade, police and the general public. To this end, we spoke to 130 firefighters and 150 police officers, accompanied them on their missions and took the views of the public into account through discussions with various Berlin initiatives and institutions. Our study shows why bodycams are not always activated, how they can influence the relationship of trust with the public, and what role bodycam videos play as evidence in court. The full report can be found here: Bodycam Study.

Freitag Extra: City and Migration. Student project publication released

In September 2024, students in the Urban and Regional Sociology department completed their MA project seminar ‘Urban Citizenship’ with a newspaper supplement for the weekly newspaper ‘der Freitag’. The supplement covers topics and issues related to the seminar in a journalistic style. The newspaper supplement was graphically designed by students at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. The printed booklet is included with the regular print edition of Freitag dated 26 September 2024. We would like to congratulate the students on this collaborative project and express our sincere thanks to everyone involved. You can download the PDF here: Freitag Extra: City and Migration (5mb).

Urban Citizenship-Making at Times of Crisis: Final publication released

Following the conclusion of our project ‘Urban Citizenship-Making at Times of Crisis,’ the final publication was released in August 2024. What role do neighbourhood organisations play in providing access to information and resources in times of social crisis, especially for migrants? And how important is the local context in this regard? These questions are addressed empirically and comparatively using the example of the coronavirus crisis in three cities: Berlin, Copenhagen and Tel Aviv. Anyone interested can find the article online and open access on the website of the journal ‘Citizenship Studies’. We hope you enjoy reading it.

New book published: Emotions in Crisis

In May 2024, Nina Margies' new book Emotions in Crisis was published by Bristol University Press. It explores the question of what it means for people when their seemingly secure future suddenly collapses. Using the example of young adults in Spain after the 2008 economic crisis, the book shows how the loss of future prospects led to uncertainty, fear, frustration and anger, and how young people dealt with these feelings. It highlights how social changes affect individual and collective feelings and that ‘emotional labour’ is needed to adapt to such profound changes.

Student MA thesis at the Young Forum | VHW 2023 presented

This year's Young Forum | vhw took place on 2 November – this time on the topics of ‘Caring Cities, Cooperative Living and Digital Neighbourhood Platforms’. We are delighted that our MA student Maria J. Villamayor i Villar was one of three candidates invited to present her thesis on ‘Post-welfare platforms in the neighbourhood and the civil societyisation of the social question’. The thesis was jointly supervised by Karin Lohr (sociology of work and gender relations) and Henrik Lebuhn (urban and regional sociology). Congratulations!

International study on the financialisation of urban housing markets published

We are delighted to announce the publication of a study by an international collaborative project on the consequences of financialisation on urban housing markets: ‘Housing policy under the conditions of financialisation (HoPoFin)’. Coordinated by Andrej Holm (HU), Georgia Alexandri (IRS) and Matthias Bernt (IRS), a total of seven case studies (Athens, Berlin, Brussels, London, Malmö, Milan, Warsaw) examined the impact of institutional investors on housing provision and housing policy. The research project was funded by the Urban School at SciencesPo in Paris and can be downloaded there: Report: Housing policy under the conditions of financialisation.

Bildungsserver Berlin Brandenburg publishes student papers on the topic of ‘health equity’

We are delighted about the online publication of the student papers from the BA seminar ‘Health Equity’. In the interdisciplinary seminar led by Henning Füller (Geography) and Henrik Lebuhn (Urban Sociology), students developed educational materials and handouts for teaching on the topic of ‘health equity’ in the 2022 summer semester. The results have now been published by the Berlin Brandenburg Education Server. The project link can be found here. Congratulations!

New project: Urban citizenship in the local context

At the beginning of the 2023/24 winter semester, we will start work on a new study on the topic of ‘urban citizenship’. The project prepares the international research debate on urban citizenship and is aimed specifically at actors from urban and local politics in German-speaking countries. In addition to evaluating the literature, we will work with empirical case studies and workshops with experts. The project will run for 12 months and is funded by vhw - Bundesverband für Wohnen und Stadtentwicklung e.V..

Awards

Georg Simmel Prize 2025 for Malin Tiemann: Malin Tiemann has received this year's GSZ Prize for the best BA thesis in the field of urban research for her thesis on ‘the role of neighbourhoods in providing support structures for older adults in different types of housing’. She wrote the thesis in 2024 at the LB Urban and Regional Sociology – we congratulate her on this success!

Karin Lohr Prize 2024 for Helene Mildenberger: The jury of the Karin Lohr Prize for the best thesis at the ISW awarded this year's prize to Helene Mildenberger. The prize honours her outstanding MA thesis on ‘Police response to domestic violence. A state actor in the context of private violence. An institutional-ethnographic study,’ which she completed at the LB Urban and Regional Sociology. Congratulations!

Faculty Award for ‘Good Teaching’ 2024 goes to Henrik Lebuhn: On 15 January 2025, the Faculty Council of the KSBF decided to award the Faculty Award for Good Teaching 2024 to Henrik Lebuhn. This award recognises his two-semester MA project seminar on the topic of ‘Urban Citizenship’ from the 2023/24 winter semester and the 2024 summer semester. A total of four courses from different institutes within the faculty received awards. We congratulate all the award winners!

New publications

Lebuhn, Henrik (2025): Die sorgende Stadt, in: Eckardt Frank (Hg.): Handbuch Stadtsoziologie, Springer, mit Sabine Knierbein & Angelika Gabauer

Margies, Nina; Hensel, Roman; von Steinsdorff, S.; Kaiser, Anna-Bettina; Blokland, Talja (2024) Bodycams bei der Polizei Berlin und Berliner Feuerwehr (open access), Berlin: Law and Society Institute.

Margies, Nina (2024) Making sense of change: emotive-cognitive reframing of young people in post-crisis Spain (open access), Cultural Sociology, 18(2), 238-257.

Lebuhn, Henrik (2024): Migrant-Serving Organizations and Urban Citizenship-Making in Times of Crisis: Copenhagen, Berlin and Tel Aviv compared (open access), in: Citizenship Studies, 28/3, 363-383, mit Lisa Chodorkoff, Nir Cohen, Tatiana Fogelman, Daniela Krüger & Maayan Ravid

Margies, Nina (2024) Emotions in Crisis. Youth and Social Change in Spain, Bristol University Press.

Krüger, Navid; Lebuhn, Henrik (2024): Zur Debatte um rechte Bewegungen in der Stadt, Blogbeitrag: Netzwerk Fluchtforschung (23.4.2024)

Margies, Nina; Kesane, Iveta; Verbalyte, Monika; Hilmar, Till (2024) Deep transformations: Lived experiences and emotions in social change narratives (open access), Cultural Sociology, 18(2), 181-198.

Blokland, Talja; Feltran, Gabriel; Margies, Nina (2024) Introduction: An Urban Impasse, TESG, 115(2), 201-205.

Holm, Andrej; Alexandri, Georgia; Bernt, Matthias et al. (2023): Housing policy under the conditions of financialisation. The impact of institutional investors on affordable housing in European Cities. (HoPoFin). Paris: SciencesPo Urban School