Guest Researcher
Laura Kemmer holds the Martius Chair Germany-Brazil for Sustainability and Humanities of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the University of São Paulo. She is an urban researcher working at the intersection of anthropology, geography, and feminist theory. Her research focuses on ecologies of healing and reparation in São Paulo’s center, especially residents’ relations with water and soil.
Laura earned her PhD at HafenCity University Hamburg with the dissertation “Bonding. Infrastructure, Affect, and the Emergence of Urban Collectivity“. She subsequently held postdoctoral and visiting scholar positions at the Geography Department of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technische Universität Berlin.
Her current projects include “Designing with the Planet. Connecting riparian zones of struggle in São Paulo, Jakarta and Berlin” (with Jamie Baxter, Technische Universität Berlin), “Re-Scaling Global Health. Human Health and Multispecies Cohabitation on an Urban Planet” (PIs Sandra Jasper and Dorothee Brantz, Berlin University Alliance), and Urban Evidentiary Ecologies (with Fraya Frehse, Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability).
Research Interests
- Anthropologies of infrastructure and urban collectivity
- Urban Evidentiary Ecologies
- Planetary Health and Healing
- Elemental Urbanism
- Collaborative ethnographic methods and transdisciplinary research
Publications
Monograph (forthcoming) Bonding. Infrastructure, affect, and the emergence of urban collectivity, ‘Politics of Repair’-Series, Eds. Francisco Martínez and Patrick Laviolette, Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books.
Edited Volume (forthcoming 2025): “Planet-ability. Relations of health, healing and cohabitation in the planetary” (eds. with Tatiana Camargo, Jamie Baxter and Antonio Saraiva), USP University Press
Special Issue (forthcoming 2025) (co-edited with Jamie Baxter): “Decentering Urban Experiments: Towards Planetary Strategies of Design”, Architecture and Culture
Special Issue (2024) (co-edited with Ignacio Farías) “Urban Elements”, in: Berliner Blätter (with contributions by students of HU MA Urban Geography, MA Gender Studies/ZtG and MA Ethnographie)
Original Article (2023) “Leaks and Rumblings: An experimental confluence of (in)visible rivers in São Paulo and London” (with Jan van Duppen et al.), In: Mediapolis. a journal of cities and culture, 4:8, https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2023/11/leaks-and-rumblings/
Original Article (2023) (with Sylvana Jahre) “Collaborative Excursion Brazil “Into the cold water” In: GeoAgenda 2023/2.
Original Article (2022) “Bonding oder‚ Was hält die Stadt zusammen?‘” In: Sub/urban Zeitschrift für kritische Stadtforschung, 2/3, https://doi.org/10.36900/suburban.v10i2/3.816
Original Article (2022) (co-authored with Wladimir Sgibnev, Tonio Weicker and Maxwell Woods): “Spaces of Exposure. Re-thinking ‘publicness’ through public transport?”. In: Cultural Geographies 29:2, 285-299, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F14744740211068097.
Original Article (2021) (co-authored with AbdouMaliq Simone) “Standing by the promise. Arts of anticipation in Rio and Jakarta”, in: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space – Special Issue “Minor Futures: Pluralizing the Arts of Anticipation”, Eds. Martin Savransky and Sébastien Nobert, available at: doi.org/10.1177/0263775820982997.
Original Article (2020) “Free Riding Rio: Protest, Public Transport and the Politics of a Footboard” (Open Access), in: City and Society, 32:1, 157-181 – Special Issue “The Political Materiality of Cities”, Eds. Rivke Jaffe and Francesca Pilo´, available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12245
