Luzie Gerstenhöfer's doctoral research focuses on critical infrastructures in the context of urban inequality. She examines infrastructure disruptions against the backdrop of contested ownership arrangements, drawing on Barcelona as a primary case study as well as supplementary comparative cases from the United Kingdom and Germany.
Since January 2025, she has been a research associate in the project "Who owns the Foundation? Infrastructure Orders and the Renegotiation of the Public Sphere" (PI: Prof. Dr. Silke van Dyk), part of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 294 "Structural Change of Property" at the Institute of Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena. From October 2022 to December 2024, she was a research associate in Subproject "Debating the public sphere and the future of the commons: Property relations in the context of welfare state transformation. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and Human Geography and an M.A. in Sociology with a focus on socio-ecological transformation and economy, work and welfare, both from Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Her research interests include property relations and infrastructure policy, urban inequality and public services, as well as municipalist approaches to urban politics. Conceptually, she draws on Political Economy, Discourse and Hegemony Theory, Science and Technology Studies, and Critical Urban Studies.
