We are urban HEAP!
Health and Everyday Activities take Place - Introducing our research group
The urban HEAP (Health and Everyday Activities take Place) research group focuses on the interactions between everyday social life and the socio-spatial and ecological environment. It conducts interdisciplinary critical urban research and is currently working on the following research projects and topics:
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Critical perspectives on digitalization in cities
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Sustainable urban development
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Urban political ecology and environmental justice: Socio-culturally and socio-ecologically just aspects of urban development
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Feminist geographies and new materialisms
The research group cooperates closely with the RCE Graz-Styria - Center for Sustainable Societal Transformation
Our contents
How do we live in the city? Urban HEAP deals with the everyday togetherness and opposition of life in the city - a life that is characterized by the diversity of people, their needs, realities and relationalities. We are interested in how society is organized in urban space and what role spatial conditions play in the functioning of urban societies.
Our research topics include social struggles over supply and pollution (housing, food, mobility, waste, health, work and care). Our activities are informed by social theory and address urban processes using qualitative and mixed-methods research designs in the field of tension between:
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Social Romanticism & Radical Democracy,
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green economy & environmental justice,
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Modernization optimism & technological sovereignty,
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power & powerlessness.
