CV
Since 01/2025
PhD Candidate in Human Geography – MLU
Since 01/2025
Research Associate and Doctoral Researcher – JTC Team A2
10/2021 – 10/2024
M. Sc. International Area Studies – Global Change Geography – MLU
Fellow, Transatlantic Student Summit Program 24/25 of the German-American Institute Saxony (DAIS)
Master’s thesis title: “Encountering Structural Change in the Central German Coalfield: Affective Everyday Realities and Multi-Temporal Tensions Amidst ‘Left Behind’ Configurations in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany”
10/2023 – 01/2025
Student Assistant – Department of Anthropogeographie MLU
10/2016 – 04/2021
B. A. English/American Studies and Political Science – MLU
Bachelor’s thesis title: “Narrative Voice and Intertextuality in Brenton Harrison Tarrant’s Manifesto (2019)”
07/2020 – 01/2025
Sales Associate and Warehouse Clerk – TK MAXX Leipzig
10/2019 – 01/2025
Service – Wenzel Prager Bierstuben Leipzig
Further information
Jürgen Viet Anh Höpfel is a PhD candidate at the Just Transition Center. As part of the research group “Chemistry in transition,” he investigates the affective everyday realities of postsocialist and postindustrial transformations in the Central German Chemical Triangle from a human geographical perspective.
Project description
My dissertation project examines the Central German Chemical Triangle, especially the city of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, as a socio-spatial palimpsest of a chemical lifeworld in transition. At the center sits the question of how local residents, the administration, and other actors experience, negotiate, and embody the process of ‘being justly or structurally changed’ in the context of everyday life. My research combines ethnographic methods with theories of the lifeworld, affect, atmosphere, toxic heritage, and memory-political negotiation of heritage in late industrialism. All in all, with my project I want to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the socio-spatial dynamics at the heart of the current Just Transition in the Central German Chemical Triangle.