Professor

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

Verena Brinks has been a Professor of “Digital Cultures” since September 2019. Her primary disciplinary focus is Economic Geography. She conducts research on knowledge and expertise in the context of digitality. In this context, she examines “user innovations” in predominantly digital communities as well as the phenomenon of “lay expertise” in the digital sphere. Another area of research involves exploring new spaces for work and creativity that are strongly shaped by digitality (e.g., coworking spaces, fab labs). A current focus also includes research on the geographies of “crises.”

From May 2012 to August 2019, Verena Brinks worked as an academic staff member (doctoral candidate and postdoctoral researcher) at the Leibniz Institute for Spatial Social Research (IRS) in Erkner (near Berlin). In 2016, she completed her doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin on user innovations. She completed her master’s degree in 2012 with a thesis on coworking spaces at the University of Münster (minors: Political Science, Sociology).

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

In the past, she has served as an evaluator for the following journals, among others: Creativity and Innovation Management, Environment and Planning A, Erdkunde, European Planning Studies, Geoforum, GeoJournal, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Organization Studies, Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Raumforschung und Raumordnung, Regional Studies, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie