Prof. Dr. Susanne Heeg has been a Professor of Urban Geography at the Institute of Human Geography at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main since 2006. In addition to her involvement in the DFG Research Training Group “Architekturen Organisieren,” she is also a member of the DFG Research Training Group “Gewohnter Wandel.” From September 2023 to July 2024, she was a Fellow in the “Reclaiming Common Wealth” program at THE NEW INSTITUTE in Hamburg. From April 2021 to June 2022, she served on the expert commission for the Berlin referendum on the “socialization of large housing companies.”
Her international experience includes research stays as a Senior Research Fellow at the Instituto de Geografía of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 2018, at the City Institute of York University in Toronto in 2010, as well as Visiting Scholar positions at Northeastern University in Boston (2005) and the University of Cape Town (2002).
She began her academic career as a Research Assistant at the University of Hamburg following her habilitation on the topic “Property-led development in Boston: Urban development, real estate economics, and local politics” in 2006. From 1995 to 2000, she worked as a Research Associate at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). She completed her studies in Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt.
E-Mail: heeg@geo.uni-frankfurt.de
Research interest
Her research focuses on exploring cities as focal points of societal conflicts and as local nodes within the network of global dynamics. She examines the processes that have contributed to the growing significance of cities in the global era, as well as developments within cities and urban regions. Within this broad framework, her work particularly addresses the conditions and factors shaping the production of the built environment.
This involves two main research areas: First, she investigates how participation in the city is negotiated in relation to material and structural conditions and how it is simultaneously shaped by materialities. Second, she analyzes the actor and power constellations that influence urban development, including the procedures used to create transparency and calculability in the physical and spatial evolution of cities.
Recent research projects have been: 1) “Reclaiming Common Wealth” at THE NEW INSTITUTE in Hamburg; 2) “Neuordnung städtischer Verwaltungen: New Public Management am Beispiel der Liegenschaftsverwaltungen in Berlin und Frankfurt am Main”; and 3) “Organisationslogiken grenzüberschreitender Immobilienmärkte: Akteurskonstellationen und Geographien am Beispiel der Büromärkte von Warschau”.
