We are delighted to announce that Prof. Dr. Hanna Göbel, who has been teaching in Urban Design as Acting Professor for Urban Anthropology and Ethnographic Methods, has been appointed to the professorship “Methods of Urban Practice” (MuP) at HCU Hamburg, starting from summer semester 2025.

The professorship “Methods of Urban Practice” (MuP) and the related team of this department work with qualitative approaches of social and cultural sciences in research and teaching and bring them into a dialog with current urban challenges as well as social and cultural theoretical debates. We develop future-oriented methodological approaches for researching engaged urban practice in the light of current ecological, social and cultural crises and urban and spatial transformation processes. Two focal points of the research area are the integration of digital methods into cultural studies related urban research, as well as performative approaches, also in cooperation with cultural and social actors from civil society, for researching and shaping urban futures.

Situated approaches of the city
In research and teaching, the department develops and represents situated as well as sensory and perceptual approaches to the urban. We investigate forms of knowledge of everyday urban life and are interested in providing condensed and partial insights into social and cultural practices in urban space in order to be able to formulate statements about larger contexts in the context of current transformations. In doing so, we develop approaches that are oriented towards various methodological debates and cultural studies approaches to situatedness and positionalities. We place invisible, marginalized and/or indigenous forms of knowledge from the margins of the social at the center of the analysis. We ask which perspectives on the city can emerge through the consideration of plural forms of knowledge and develop appropriate forms of dense descriptions.

Open source urbanism: citizen data and sensors of everyday life
In the sense of citizen science, cities are regarded as a spatial structure of the research practice of all interested parties and from the experience of everyday urban life. How do citizens perceive the urban challenges of the present and classify them as relevant to civil society? Which forms of citizen data and which sensors and media of everyday life constitute which knowledge about grievances and concerns relevant to civil society? Which environments, infrastructures and scopes of action do citizens shape in the sense of open source urbanism? Where are the limits, where is the potential? In research and teaching, we convey and develop the foundations of critical open source urbanism and reflect on it in the context of current crises and economic and political transformations of democratic participation and culture. 

Repairing environments: Modes of cultural production
In the age of the Anthropocene and associated crises, the loss and destruction of ecological and social foundations of life are part of everyday urban practice. Repair and restoration of existing environments, revitalization and further development of institutions and relationships are becoming central cultural challenges that require their own practice and associated adaptations. The close links between the ecological crisis and social crises and questions of cultural affiliation are particularly evident in the context of building practices and the cultural design of the city. How is it possible to repair existing environments under the conditions of current transformations? Which modes of cultural production in urban space are appropriate to respond to current challenges? In research and teaching, we teach various performative approaches and methods to anticipate a repaired future and to test what cultural modes of production might look like.