{"id":10488,"date":"2025-01-26T14:09:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T13:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.humangeographie.uni-mainz.de\/?page_id=10488"},"modified":"2026-02-23T16:25:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T15:25:18","slug":"elisabeth-sommerlad","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.humangeographie.uni-mainz.de\/en\/elisabeth-sommerlad\/","title":{"rendered":"Elisabeth Sommerlad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Research assistant<\/strong> | Postdoctoral researcher<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am a research assistant (post-doc since 2019) in the Human Geography working group. From 2023-2024 I was a substitute professor for tourism geography at the University of Trier. After my diploma studies in Geography, Sociology and Communication Studies, I obtained a doctorate (from.) with a doctoral degree in Cultural Geography at JGU Mainz in 2019. In my doctoral dissertation, I examined the construction and staging of intercultural encounters in cinematic New York City. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my research and teaching, I work at the interface of social-geographical urban research, critical sustainability and transformation research, theoretically reflected tourism geography and Media Geography. I am particularly interested in the complex interactions between space, society and media contexts. My research is characterized by interdisciplinary and critically reflective perspectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n

My current research is situated at the intersection of three interwoven thematic fields. My empirical research experience includes work in the Indian Ocean (Mauritius), the United Arab Emirates (Dubai), North America (USA, Eastern Canada) and Germany. Methodologically, I rely on qualitative social and media science approaches, including ethnographic, reflexive, digital and creative methods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n<\/jgu-base-image>\n\n\n

1) Sustainability utopias and urban futures: <\/strong>Embedded in joint research with Prof. Dr. Veronika Cummings on sustainability utopias and topologies of urban futures in the Indian Ocean region, I am looking at smart cities in Mauritius. These spatial settings, which are primarily created as a strategy of economic diversification on fallow sugar cane land and in coastal regions, are marketed as sustainable visions of the future for the island. From a critical-reflexive perspective, I explore the question of how ideas and dimensions of socio-ecological transformation are negotiated and imagined here. I also question colonialities anchored in place making <\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2) Media-geographical perspectives on everyday lifeworlds: <\/strong>I am interested in how audiovisual and digital items shape and transform everyday spaces(digital place making<\/em>). In this context, I am researching media and film tourism and the question of how media imaginations shape and transform places and spatial identities. I also work (together with Prof. Dr. Veronika Cummings and Paul Hummer M.A.) on the potentials and ethical challenges of creative, audiovisual formats as a method and communication medium in and for geographical research. In connection with my research on urban futures, I am working on another project (together with Dr. Roman Mauer<\/a>, Film Studies) on the re-mapping of urban futures at the interface of film and the everyday world – we are offering an innovative teaching project<\/a> on this in the summer semester, which is funded by the Gutenberg Teaching College. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3) Theoretically reflected tourism geography:<\/strong> Inspired by my post- and decolonial research contexts, in which processes and practices of touristification often play a role, I am interested in a heterodox, reflexive examination of the complex connections between tourism and society. I understand tourism as part of a global, space-shaping (im)mobility system that is interwoven with multi-layered spatial dynamics around questions of mobility, power and justice. <\/p>\n\n\n<\/jgu-base-accordionitem>\n\n\n \n\n