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Department of Spatial Planning
Aerial shot of a quarter in Ho Chi Minh City © Sophie Schramm
Head of research group

Prof. Dr. Sophie Schramm

CV

Academic education:

  • 2014: PhD, Dissertation „Stadt im Fluss: Die Abwasserentsorgung Hanois im Lichte sozialer und räumlicher Transformationen“, TU Darmstadt, Germany
  • 2003 – 2008: Dipl.-Ing. Urban and Regional Planning, HCU Hamburg, Germany
  • 2001 – 2003: B.Sc. Urban and Regional Planning, TU Hamburg-Harburg, Germany

Work experience:

  • Since 2019: Professorship International Planning Studies and Lead of the international Master's program SPRING, Department of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund, Germany
  • 2017 – 2019: Assistant Professor, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, Netherlands
  • 2016 – 2017: Junior Research Group-Leader, Institute for Urban Development, University Kassel, Germany
  • 2012 – 2016: Research assistant, “Raum- und Infrastrukturplanung”, TU Darmstadt, Germany
  • 2008: Consultant, “Stakeholder Analysis and Stakeholder Workshop for WWF Greater Mekong Lao Country Programme AG“, Lao People's Democratic Republic
  • 2008 – 2011: Academic staff, “Umwelt- und Raumplanung”, TU Darmstadt, Germany
  • 2005 – 2006 : Intern, Safer Cities Programs UN-Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya

Scholarships & awards:

  • 2011 – 2012: Scholarship graduate school “Topology of Technology”, DFG
  • 2007: Scholarship for the preparation of a Master thesis abroad, DAAD
  • 2005: Prize for outstanding degree (B.Sc.), Irene Vorwerk Stiftung, Hamburg

Language skills:

  • German: mother tongue
  • English: business fluent
  • French: competent language use

Research

Research areas:

  • Planning and housing of rapidly growing cities
  • Heterogeneous infrastructure systems
  • Global waste and recycling flows and spatial Governance

Research projects (at IPS):

Publications:

  • Schnittfinke, T., Greiving, S., Nyamai, D.N., Scholz, W., Schramm, S., Behrens, R., Zuidgeest, M., Rink, B., Momm, S., Travassos, L., Brauer, B., Fischer, L. (2024) 'Criticality assessment and cascading effects: impacts of COVID-19 disruptions in public transport on marginalized groups in Dortmund, Germany, São Paulo, Brazil, and Cape Town, South Africa.' Journal of Surveillance, Security and Safety. 2024, 5(3), pp. 140-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/jsss.2024.11
  • Schramm, S. (2024) 'Co-Production Between Insurgency and Exploitation: Promises and Precarities of a Traveling Concept', Urban Planning, 9. doi: 10.17645/up.8235.
  • Appelhans, N. and Schramm, S. (2023) 'Between the “Structural” and the “Everyday”: Bridging Macro and Micro Perspectives in Comparative Urban Research', Urban Planning, 8(04), pp. 275-278. doi: 10.17645/up.v8i4.7967.
  • Lawhon, M. et. al. (2023) 'Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south', Futures, (154). doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2023.103270.
  • Dakyaga, F., Schramm, S., Lupala, J.M., Magembe-Mushi, D.L. (2023) 'Geographies of infrastructure: Everyday governance of urban water supply beyond the utility network in Dar es Salaam', Water Alternatives, 16(3), pp. 769-792.
  • Schramm, S., Kasper, M., Bohlen, S. et al. (2023) ‘Governing pandemic waterscapes: Covid-19 and Nairobi metropolitan services as co-catalysts of waterscape changes’, Water Alternatives, 16(2), pp. 750-768.
  • Kasper, M. and Schramm, S. (2023) ‘Storage city: Water tanks, jerry cans, and batteries as infrastructure in Nairobi’, Urban Studies. doi: 10.1177/00420980221144575.
  • Schramm, S. and Bize, A. (2022) 'Planning by Exception: The Regulation of Nairobi’s Margins', Planning Theory, 22(3). doi:10.1177/14730952221137.
  • Dakyaga, F., Kyessi, A., Schramm, S. (2022) ‘Between self-help and emerging water markets: self-governance, everyday practices and the spatiality of water access in Dar es Salaam‘, Urban Geography. doi: 10.1080/02723638.2022.2106054
  • Nyamai, D. and Schramm, S. (2022) ‘Accessibility, mobility and spatial justice in Nairobi, Kenya‘, Journal of Urban Affairs. doi: 10.1080/07352166.2022.2071284.
  • Schramm, S. (2022) 'Changement de l’assainissement à Hanoi : gouvernance, organisation, technologie',Surmonter les barrières institutionnelles et organisationnelles à l’assainissement : quoi de neuf ? Rapports techniques 68. Agence Francaise de Développement. https://www.afd.fr/en/rt68-va-barriers-to-sanitation-colon-rieu-botton-gaudry.
  • Mayaux, P., Schramm, S. und Dasgupta, S. (2022) 'Les cas de Hanoï et de l’Inde', Surmonter les barrières institutionnelles et organisationnelles à l’assainissement : quoi de neuf ? Rapports techniques 68. Agence Francaise de Développement. https://www.afd.fr/fr/rt68-surmonter-barrieres-assainissement-colon-rieu-botton-gaudry
  • Jambadu, L., Monstadt, J. and Schramm, S. (2022) 'Understanding repair and maintenance in networked water supply in Accra and Dar es Salaam', Water Alternatives, 15, pp. 413 -437.
  • Guma, P., Monstadt, J. and Schramm, S., (2022) 'Post-, pre- and non-payment: Conflicting rationalities in the digitalisation of energy access in Kibera, Nairobi', Digital Geography and Society, 3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2022.100037.
  • Guma, P., Monstadt, J. und Schramm, S., (2019) ‘Hybrid Constellations of Water Access in the Digital Age: The Case of Jisomee Mita in Soweto-Kayole, Nairobi’, Water Alternatives, 12, pp. 636–654.
  • Schramm, S. (2019) ‘Netzanschlüsse nach Bedarf, Formalisierungen und Vervielfältigungen: Die Un-Ordnung der Wasserversorgung in Kimara, Dar es Salaam’, in Altrock, U. et al. (Hrsg.) Quartiersentwicklung Im Globalen Süden. Wiesbaden:  Springer Fachmedien, pp. 101–121.
  • Schramm, S. und Ibrahim, B. (2019) ‘Hacking the pipes: Hydro-political currents in a Nairobi housing estate’, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. doi: 10.1177/2399654419865760
  • Schramm, S. und Wright-Contreras, L. (2019) ‘Suburban Constellations of Water Supply and Sanitation in Hanoi’, in Filion, P. und Pulver, N.M. (Hrsg.) Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 208–230.
  • Van Noorloos, F., Cirolia, L. R., Friendly, A., Jukur, S., Schramm, S., Steel, G. und Valenzuela, L. (2019) ‘Incremental housing as a node for intersecting flows of city-making: rethinking the housing shortage in the global South’, Environment and Urbanization. doi: 10.1177/0956247819887679.
  • Schramm, S. (2018) ‘On‐demand connections, formalization and multiplications: Dis/ordering water supply in Kimara Mwisho, Dar es Salaam’, in Spatial Practices Territory, Border and Infrastructure in Africa, Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies. Boston: Brill.
  • Schramm, S. und Thi Thanh Mai, N. (2018) ‘Turning waste into resources and resources into waste: Centralised waste-to-energy nexuses and alternative modes of nexusing in Hanoi’, Urban Studies. doi: 10.1177/0042098018797844.
  • Monstadt, J. und Schramm, S. (2017) ‘Toward The Networked City?’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32, pp. 643–656.
  • Schramm, S. (2017) ‘People’s room for manoeuvre in a fragmented city: state housing in Kibera, Nairobi’, Transformation, 93, pp. 116–141. doi: 10.1353/trn.2017.0005
  • Schramm, S. und Wright-Contreras, L. (2017) ‘Beyond passive consumption: Dis/ordering water supply and sanitation at Hanoi’s urban edge’, Geoforum, 85, pp. 299–310. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.06.016
  • Wright-Contreras, L., March, H. und Schramm, S. (2017) ‘Fragmented landscapes of water supply in suburban Hanoi’, Habitat International, 61, pp. 64–74. doi: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2017.02.002
  • Monstadt, J. und Schramm, S. (2016) ‘Changing Sanitation Infrastructure in Hanoi: hybrid topologies and the networked city’, in Coutard, O. und Rutherford, J. (Hrsg.) Beyond the Networked City: Infrastructure reconfigurations and urban change in the North and South. Oxon; New York: Routledge, pp. 26-50.
  • Schramm, S. (2016) ‘Hanoi’s Septic Tanks – Technology of a City in Flow in the late nineteenth Century and today’, in Carola Hein (Hrsg.) International Planning History Society Proceedings, 17th IPHS Conference, History-Urbanism-Resilience. TU Delft Open.
  • Schramm, S. (2016) ‘Flooding the sanitary city: Planning discourse and the materiality of urban sanitation in Hanoi’, City, 20 (1), pp. 32–51. doi: 10.1080/13604813.2015.1125717
  • Monstadt, J., Hård, M. und Schramm, S. (2015) ‘Jenseits der Netzstadt? Stadt- und Infrastrukturentwicklung in Dar es Salaam’, Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte, 1, pp. 81-92.
  • Schramm, S. (2014) ‘Stadt im Fluss: Die Abwasserentsorgung Hanois im Lichte sozialer und räumlicher Transformationen’ in Megastädte und globaler Wandel. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
  • Monstadt, J. und Schramm, S. (2013) ‘Beyond the Networked City? Suburban Constellations in Water and Sanitation’ in Keil, R. (Hrsg.) Suburban Constellations: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century. Berlin: Jovis, pp. 85-94.
  • Böhm, H. R. et al. (2011). ‘The semicentralized approach to integrated water supply and treatment of solid waste and wastewater—a flexible infrastructure strategy for rapidly growing urban regions’, Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, 13, pp. 617–623. doi: 10.1007/s10098-011-0378-9
  • Schramm, S. (2011) ‘Semicentralized water supply and treatment - options for the dynamic urban region of Hanoi, Vietnam’, Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management, 13(2), pp. 285–314.
  • Böhm, H. R. und Schramm, S. (2011) ‘Hanoi – Stadt im Fluss: Überflutungen als Folge der Machtlosigkeit der Stadtplanung’, Planerin, 4-2011, pp. 51-52.
  • Böhm, H.R.; Schramm, S. und Zeig, C. (2010) ‘Energy Saving and Emission Minimization by Means of Semicentralized Integrated Supply and Disposal Systems in Rapidly Growing Urban Regions’, International Conference on Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction, 28. August – 1.September 2010 Prag, Czech Republic, pp. 307-312.
  • Schramm, S. und Bieker, S. (2010) ‘Urban Semicentralised supply and disposal: innovations and challenges for Hanoi, Vietnam’, International Journal of Sustainable Development, 13(1/2), pp. 97-110. doi: 10.1504/IJSD.2010.035102
  • Schramm, S. (2009) ‘Stadterneuerung in Nairobi, Kenia – das Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme in der informellen Siedlung Soweto East’, in Altrock, U. et al. (Hrsg.) Jahrbuch Stadterneuerung 2009: Schwerpunkt Megacities und Stadterneuerung. Berlin, pp. 197- 211.

Teaching

Thesis supervision:

I am happy to supervise thesis projects on topics such as:

  • Infrastructure megaprojects
  • Urban megaprojects
  • Fininzialisation of housing
  • Heterogeneous Infrastructures
  • Insurgent Planning
  • Coproduction of basic services

Current coures (WiSe 2024/25):

  • B.Sc. Spatial Planning: "Was ist Raumplanung"
  • B.Sc. Spatial Planning: "Stadt des 21ten Jahrhunderts“
  • M.Sc. Spatial Planning: "Double Seminar: Regenerating Cities and Infrastructures“
  • M.Sc. SPRING: "Planning Theories and Models"
  • International PhD-Colloquium: craft of doing research

Selected past courses:

  • PhD Colloquium (2022)
  • B.Sc. Spatial Planning: "Stadt und Infrastrukturen des 21ten Jahrhunderts“ (2022)
  • M.Sc. SPRING, M.Sc. Spatial Planning: "Housing and Human Settlement Planning” (2022)
  • M.Sc. Spatial Planning: “Lecture Series International Planning Sessions” (2021)
  • M.Sc. Spatial Planning: "Urban Infrastructures“ (2021)
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