Looking back with Postdoc Jochen Kibel

LolMyPaper. I’d summarize my latest paper like this:When people change, adapt or rebuild the spaces in which they live, they also develop a different sense of themselves. Interacting with spaces changes not only the spaces we live in, but also how we see ourselves.

It’s all about that space. Communicative Constructivism helped me understand subjectivity in a fairly radically decentered way, and I was able to apply the relationship between subjects and space using the CRC’s hypothesis that space is social, yet the social is equally spatial. Subjects do not only construct spaces; they themselves are always spatially constructed.

Looking back, the advice I would give to my past self who was just starting out in an academic career would be: Better stay away from that … But actually, it’s amazing!

It’s all about the spatial arrangement. My ideal writing setting is rather classic: a desk, a computer, coffee.

When you know, you know. The most surprising thing about doing a Postdoc compared to a PhD was that the two of them (PhD / Postdoc) have nothing in common.

Author Bio: Jochen Kibel is a research associate at the Institute of Sociology at Technische Universität Berlin and PI of the CRC 1265 subproject A05 “Being Home. Living Spaces and Self-Images of the Kenyan Middle Class”. His research examines the relationship between subjectivation, colonial architecture, and spatial planning. In 2023, he was a visiting fellow at the University of Nairobi.