Christian Jacobs, 2013-2020

Christian Jacobs was a doctoral student in the Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Göttingen. After studying sociology and geography at the Universities of Göttingen and Utrecht, Christian received his M.A. in Sociology in 2013. His final thesis examined the significance of contact opportunities in public space of neighbourhoods for the frequency of interethnic contacts. Since 2009, Christian had already been working at the Institute as a Student Assistant, where he was mainly contributing to the “Diversity and Contact” (DivCon) study. His research interests are in urban and diversity studies, city planning, housing policies, spatial structures, and public spaces of cities. Currently, Christian works for the City of Hildesheim in the Department of Youth, Social Affairs, Schools and Sports in the Social Planning Department.

Research projects

• Planning diversity: the influence of city planning on spatial structures of diversity and the cohabitation of diverse groups (completed)
• Cities and the challenge of diversity: a study in Germany and France · CityDiv (with Karen Schönwälder (project leader), Christine Lang, Julia Martinez-Ariño, Michalis Moutselos, Maria Schiller, Lisa Szepan and Alexandre Tandé)
• Diversity and contact · DivCon (completed) (with Karen Schönwälder (project leader), Steven Vertovec, Sören Petermann [GESIS Leibniz Institute in Cologne], Jörg Hüttermann [Bielefeld University], Thomas Schmitt [Erlangen University], Mijal Gandelsman-Trier [Hamburg University], Miles Hewstone [University of Oxford], Katharina Schmid [University of Oxford] and Dietlind Stolle [McGill University, Montreal])