Dr. Thomas Dörfler
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Short biography
Dr. Thomas Dörfler has been working for several years at the interface between geography and sociology with a strong focus on social science methodologies and spatial theories. His dissertation dealt with an ethnographically designed social space study based on Bourdieu's class theory in East Berlin/Prenzlauer Berg. It examined shifts in social milieus in order to be able to reconstruct the dramatic changes since the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as their socio-spatial consequences.
He is currently working on his (cumulative) habilitation, which is due to be completed in spring / summer 2023. This will bring together his previous research results and theoretical-conceptual work from the perspective of a phenomenological human geography understood as a spatial science.
Thomas Dörfler held the professorship for human geography at the Institute of Geography in Heidelberg from April 2012 to autumn 2022. He teaches and conducts interdisciplinary research on the topics of socio-material spatiality, urban-rural differences and (spatial) methodologies. His focus lies on the combination of spatial research (spatial concepts, experienced spatiality, etc.) with social science theory (sociology of knowledge, phenomenology).
Substitute professorships at the RUB Bochum (urban and regional sociology 2014-2016), teaching at the FU Berlin and the University of Bayreuth (2016-2019).
Thomas Dörfler has been a research associate in the Social Geography Group at Friedrich Schiller University Jena since autumn 2022.
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Research interest
- Spatial theory
- Social geography
- Urban and regional research
- Social science reconstruction and hermeneutics
- Methods and Methodologies
- The Phenomenology of the lived body / corporeality
- Philosophical Anthropology