Prof. Dr. Sybille Frank is Professor of Urban and Spatial Sociology at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She has taught at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Technical University of Berlin and has held the position of La Sapienza Visiting Professor for Research Activities at the Università di Roma La Sapienza as well as that of the City of Vienna Visiting Professor for Urban Culture and Public Space at the Vienna University of Technology. Her research focuses on conflicts over built space, places, tourism and heritage, and on urban violence. Recent publications include the co-edited books Unsettled Urban Space. Routines, Temporalities and Contestations (2023); The Power of New Urban Tourism. Spaces, Representations and Contestations (2022); Urban Heritage in Divided Cities: Contested Pasts (2020), as well as, a co-edited special issue of the journal City on Urban Fallism. Monuments, Iconoclasm and Activism (2020) and a monograph Wall Memorials and Heritage: The Heritage Industry of Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie (2016).
E-Mail: sybille.frank@tu-darmstadt.de
Research interest
My research interests lie at the intersection of sociological urban, spatial, and memory research. My focus is on the question of which pasts are remembered or concealed in urban spaces and the role built structures play in this. I am interested in how memories are materially manifested in urban spaces and how these architectures can create or convey but also cover up or erase identities. Since memories and identities are always linked to certain social groups, this also allows us to examine power relations and questions of social inclusion and exclusion of these groups. Specifically, I am primarily concerned with conflicts over ‘difficult heritage’ and have researched architecture in (formerly) divided cities and (former) borders, the destruction of monuments, the memory of terrorist violence, and street names that link streets with controversial memories.
Publications:
Business-as-unusual: Exploring port stakeholders’ time tactics for mediating recent disruptions at the Port of Rotterdam, 2025
Memory before (and after) Terrorist Acts of Violence: 2024