Team

Join the team

Interested in the research topics and projects?

Positions as student assistants and for PhD students become available on a regular basis.

There is also the possibility of coming to the department as a guest researcher.

Join the team: More

Office hours

Anna Growe:
During the lecture period: Tuesdays between 11 AM and 12 AM.
In the lecture-free period: by appointment by mail.

Guest Researcher

From 2017 to 2022, Shuang Ma completed his doctorate in Human Geography at the School of Urban and Regional Science, East China Normal University. He subsequently joined the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, where his research focused on regional innovation and industrial clusters.

From January 2026, with funding from the China Scholarship Council, he began a visiting research stay in the Economics of Urban and Regional Development research group. His research project, titled “Institutional Change and Industrial Path Evolution in a Resource-Based Manufacturing Cluster,” examined the role of institutional change in shaping the path evolution of resource-based industries and analysed its effects within the regional context of China.

PhDs

Jessica Köchling studied geography at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg from 2017 to 2022. After completing a wide-ranging bachelor's degree, she specialised in urban and regional development. After completing her Master of Science with a focus on urban geography, she took up her position as city manager in Worms, where she plays a key role in various city centre development projects. In summer 2023, Jessica Köchling began working on her doctorate on the topic of "City centre revitalisation in a multi-level governance context" in the Economics of Urban and Regional Development working group. The aim of the study is to determine the influence of current funding programmes as an instrument for the revitalising and sustainable development of city centres.

 

He studied urban and regional planning at the University of Kassel from 2016 to 2023, focusing first on transport planning and then on sustainable development of cities, especially in shrinking regions. Since summer of 2023 Markus Nüsse has been working on his doctorate on "Supply in rural areas" in the Economics of Urban and Regional Development working group in order to explore how supply of services and goods of daily needs in peripheral areas can be planned in the future.

Tahia Tasnia completed her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture at Khulna University, Bangladesh (2013–2019). She then pursued a Master’s in Architectural and Cultural Heritage at Hochschule Anhalt, graduating in 2022. In October 2025, she began her doctoral research in the Economics of Urban and Regional Development working group. Her dissertation, titled “Integrating Water Sensitive Urban Design into Regional Growth and Climate Adaptation Strategies: A Multi-Scale Spatial Planning Approach”, aims to develop a framework for embedding water-sensitive solutions into long-term spatial planning, regional governance, and climate adaptation strategies.

 

Former staff

Simin Yan, former Research Assistant in our group, supported Sino-German research projects, authored reports, and contributed to other related research activities. She is now a Hongshen Junior Faculty Member (Assistant Researcher) at Chongqing University’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning in China. In May 2025, she received her PhD from Heidelberg University's Institute of Geography with a dissertation titled "Towards an Era of Mega-regionalism: Governing Complex City-Regions through Rescaling Processes", supervised by Prof. Dr. Anna Growe.

  • Dr. Simin Yan
  • Dr. Ahmed Bakry
  • V.-Prof. Dr. Anna Butzin (2021-2023)
  • V.-Prof. Dr. Janet Merkel (2021)
  • Prof. Dr. Ulf Hahne (1999-2020)