Portraitfoto Maren Schwarz

Maren Schwarz

Neighbourliness – Living with Contradictions

We are all made neighbours as soon as we settle down in any form. This role thus becomes an omnipresent phenomenon that no one can escape and that is lived out in the most diverse ways. In academic discourse, however, neighbourhood/s are set to be dissociated by the fragmenting processes of modernity. With my doctoral project, I aim at revisiting the topic of neighbourhood/s from a geographical perspective and discuss them as spaces of everyday encounter. In doing so, I contribute to our understanding of living together in urban spaces. From my point of view, urban space is characterised by contradictions that are re/produced, negotiated, solved or endured in everyday life.

Research interests
  • urban research
  • critical geography
  • (creative) ethnographic research methods
  • everyday world perspectives
  • forms of living together and interacting in spaces
Vita
  • 2024
    Visiting researcher, Department of Geography, Durham University, England, January – March
  • since 2022
    Research assistant, doctoral fellow, University of Bremen.
  • 2021 – 2022
    Student Assistant, Institute for Labour and Economy, University of Bremen, Department regional developement and financial policy, research field city and region.
  • 2020 – 2022
    M.A. Urban and Regional Developement, University of Bremen.
  • 2018­
    Student Assistant, SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, University of Bremen, CRC 1342 Global Dynamics of Social Policy.
  • 2017 – 2020     
    Working Group Critical Geography, Bremen.
  • 2016 – 2020
    B.A. Geography, University of Bremen.
Publications
  • 2023
    Nischwitz, Guido; von Bestenbostel, Martin; Knieling, Fiona; Schwarz, Maren: The Bremen Region – Challenges of the regional interrelationship of the city of Bremen with ist surrounding region in Lower Saxony. In: Institute for Labour and Economy; Chamber of Employees Bremen (Ed.): Labour and Economy in Bremen, 43th edition.
  • 2022
    Cartographies of Low German (with Leyla Olberding), Exhibition: Bremen talks – An Exhibition on Multilingualism in Bremen, Focke Museum Bremen (awarded at the competition of the Bremen Parliament: Best op Platt).
  • 2021
    Audio-walk Peat in Findorff (with Paul Matuszewski)

  • 2019
    Scientific Comic Rotkäppchen und die Wölfe (mit Finja Beukemann und Lisa Grill) In: Barning, L./Wiechers, H. (Hrsg.): Lupus Hominis – Feldforschung zum Verhältnis von Menschen und Tieren. Kritische Geographie Bremen, 115–128.
Talks, Workshops, and Events
  • 2023
    ‘Reconstructed regions of Low German’ (with Leyla Olberding), Hanseatic (city) routes – Cross-state advanced training series for Low German, Landesinstitut für Schule Bremen, online
  • 2023
    Talk How to be: a careful partial participant? at the German Congress for Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
  • 2023
    Talk Doors that make neighbourhoods? at the German Congress for Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
  • 2023
    Workshop A fanfold flyer as intermediary between field and science’ at the 7th annual meeting of the working group Qualitative Methods within geography and spatial social and cultural sciences, Goslar.
  • 2023
    Talk Neighbourhoods as micropolitical fields of negotiation of contradictions at the conference Neue Kulturgeographie, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
  • 2022
    Workshop Rethinking neighbourhoods using the Comparative Urbanism Approach at the Working Group Latin America of the German Society for Geography (DGfG), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – KIT.
  • 2021               
    Urban walk Spaces of fear (with Alena Trapp), critical urban research at handyshop, artistic residence at araum, Bremen.
  • 2021               
    Workshop Light in the City‘ (with Prof.in Dr.in Julia Lossau) at the German Congress for Geography
  • 2021               
    Urban excursion Informality in Bremen (with Fritz Limberg) in Latin American Research in Dialogue, Hochschule Bremen.
idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”

Martin Nonhoff
city

“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”

Julia Lossau
diversity and plurality

“Join us to create more diversity and plurality in knowledge production.”

Gisela Febel
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff
sustained engagement

“The history of Western philosophy can be understood as a sustained engagement with contradiction.”

Norman Sieroka