Teaching

Project / Helena Cermeño / Details on HisPos

In the face of a global housing crisis exacerbated by market-oriented policies that treat housing primarily as a commodity, innovative and community-driven alternatives are gaining traction. This course critically explores collaborative housing (CH) models—including cooperatives, cohousing, Community Land Trusts (CLTs), and self-organized initiatives—as responses to the pressing challenges of affordability, social inclusion, and sustainability. Despite the growing relevance of CH models worldwide, research and knowledge exchange remain fragmented.

Students will engage in a comparative analysis of CH initiatives across different geographical, social, and policy contexts through a structured project-based learning approach. They will apply basic planning methodologies, explore strategic and spatial planning tools, and develop policy-oriented solutions to enhance the effectiveness and scalability of CH models. For that purpose, this project will be connected to the Kassel SDG+ Lab, aligning with global sustainability objectives and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. To contribute to the SDG+ Lab’s ongoing Gemeinschaftlich Wohnen Challenge, students will examine how CH initiatives navigate institutional frameworks, governance structures, and participatory processes while addressing structural tensions, collaboration mechanisms, and regulatory challenges. The course will conclude with a student-led research synthesis, combining visual mapping, diverse representation techniques, and policy recommendations to inform and advance discussions on a future roadmap for collaborative housing projects in Kassel. In alignment with the SDG+ Lab-anchored Gemeinschaftlich Wohnen working group, the work of students will seek to produce outputs that can contribute in the long run to the establishment of a municipal support structure for communal living, comparable to housing counselling centres in Frankfurt, Marburg or Göttingen. This initiative would seek to support the realization of such projects, strengthening their feasibility, scalability, and long-term sustainability and potentially establishing Kassel as a model for sustainable neighbourhood development and communal living in Hessen.

By the end of the course, students will have acquired practical skills in team-oriented research, spatial analysis, and visual representation. Additionally, they will have developed a foundational understanding of urban planning methods and policy frameworks related to collaborative housing. This will enable them to critically evaluate housing models, develop context-specific planning strategies, and engage in informed discussions on housing affordability, social inclusion, and sustainability.

Lecture / Carsten Keller and Moritz Merten / Details on HisPos

The aim is to introduce students to basic methods of qualitative and quantitative social research and to apply them to spatial research questions. Students should acquire the ability to develop a scientific question and implement it independently in a suitable empirical research design. In particular, the following content should be taught:

• Basic concepts of empirical social research as well as urban and regional research
• Conception of a research process: development of a research question, choice of methods, implementation and evaluation
• Qualitative and quantitative survey methods: qualitative interview, focus groups, (non-)participant observation, standardized survey
• Methods of (software-supported) qualitative and quantitative data analysis
• Use of existing quantitative and qualitative data sets

Seminar / Carsten Keller / Details on HisPos

Further information will follow.

Carsten Keller / Details on HisPos

The colloquium is intended to give students the opportunity to present their own theses and/or to gain an insight into the processes of academic work (e.g. by discussing texts). It is open to Bachelor's, Master's and doctoral students, provided that they are interested in academic work, discursive exchange and the reflection of research work with regard to its relevance to urban and regional sociology.