Junior professor

• Community research
• Innovation research
• Expertise and knowledge
• Geographies of crises
• New places of work
• Economic geography

Verena Brinks has been a junior professor for the “Geography of Social Media and Digital Cultures” since September 2019. Her disciplinary focus is primarily on economic geography. Her research focuses on knowledge and expertise under the conditions of digitality. In this context, she deals with “user innovations” in predominantly digitally active communities and with the phenomenon of “lay expertise” in the digital space. Another field of research is the examination of new places of work and creativity that are strongly characterized by digitality (e.g. coworking spaces, fab labs). For several years, Verena Brinks has also been working intensively on the geographies of “crises” and the significance of expertise in crises.

From May 2012 to August 2019, Verena Brinks worked as a research assistant (PhD student and postdoctoral researcher) at the Leibniz Institute for Spatial Social Research (IRS) in Erkner (near Berlin). In 2016, she completed her doctorate at the Free University of Berlin on user innovations. In 2012, she completed her diploma studies at the University of Münster with a thesis on coworking spaces (minor subjects: political science, sociology).

Verena Brinks works qualitatively (e.g. spatio-temporal process research, (online) ethnography, qualitative social research).