Short CV
Andrea Protschky is a research associate at the Chair of Urban Planning at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She studied Kultur der Metropole (B.A.) at HafenCity University Hamburg and Urban Design (M.Sc.) at TU Berlin. From 2019 to 2024 she was a PhD candidate and later a postdoctoral researcher in the Research Training Group KRITIS (Critical Infrastructures: Construction, Functional Crises and Protection in Cities) at TU Darmstadt.
In May 2024, she completed her PhD in a joint-degree program in sociology at TU Darmstadt and Urban Planning at the Universiteit Utrecht. In her thesis, she dealt with the use and replacement of infrastructure (water, energy, mobility, communication) by unhoused persons in Berlin
Research focus
- Housing and Homelessness
- Infrastructural Inequalities
- Practice Theory
- Sociology of the body
Recent projects
“Ausschluss trotz Anschluss: Prekarität von Wohnen und Infrastruktur”
In the context of the Global North, infrastructure for water, energy, communication and mobility has often been portrayed as a guarantor of equal living conditions. A central aspect of this perception is the provision of infrastructures within or close to the home. In recent decades, however, we have witnessed a change in differentiated infrastructure access: on the one hand, the disintegration into well-supplied and infrastructurally marginalized areas; on the other hand, the restriction of functionality and affordability of infrastructures in the home due to the housing crisis and inflation. In the project, I examine the nexus of precarious housing and precarious infrastructure access. I focus on the limited usability of infrastructure despite access to housing, for example in the case of energy cuts or dysfunctional technology, as well as the restriction of housing functions and even loss of housing due to limited supply, service arrears or illegalized use of infrastructure.
“Improvising Infrastructure. Infrastructure Practices and Social Exclusions of Unhoused Persons in Berlin”(PhD project 2019-2024)