Universities as Transformative Social Spaces

Andrea Kölbel, DPhil (Oxon.), is a social and economic scientist with a specific interest in the changing nature of higher education, spatial (im)mobilities, social theory, and participative research methods. She holds a doctorate in human geography from the University of Oxford and an MBA from the Central European University in Budapest. With her research into young people's lives and social inequalities, she builds upon her professional experiences in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of education programmes on behalf of universities, ministries of education and research, and the UN Refugee Agency in countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Susan Thieme is Professor of Geography and Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She holds a PhD and Habilitation (professorial thesis) from the University of Zurich and studied at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and Plymouth, UK. She was Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, UK, Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands, and the American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan. Her research interests are transformation and sustainability, (im)mobilities, and in/justices in the context of education and work. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka is professor of social anthropology at the Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany. Until July 2019, she was Senate member of the German Research Foundation, Dean of her Faculty and Co-Director of the Centre of Interdisciplinary Research, ZIF. Her research focuses currently on knowledge production and circulation, on belonging as well as on the social life of universities (especially the nexus of inequality and heterogeneity). She studied at the University of Zurich where she worked for many years as academic collaborator. She then shifted to the Centre for Development Studies at the University of Bonn where she acted as Senior Research Fellow, as Deputy Director, and as Acting Director.