People
© Marc Volk

Claudia Mock

Associate Member

Technische Universität Berlin
BH 5-1 | Room BH-N 233
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 1
10587 Berlin

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+49 (0)30 314-73796

claudia.mock@tu-berlin.de

CV

  • Since 01/2022

    Research associate in the Method-Lab of the CRC 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces"

  • 04/2018 – 12/2021

    Research assistant and PhD candidate at the CRC 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces", subproject "Biographies of the Middle Classes: Spatial Experience and Meaning in the Life Course Narrative" (A05)
    Technical University of Berlin

  • 08/2016 – 06/2018

    Research assistant and lecturer at the department of General and Historical Educational Science in the context of the international research project "Children´s Understandings of Well-being in Global and Local Contexts"
    Technical University of Berlin

  • Winter term 2016/17

    Guest Lecturer at the department of Educational Science
    Title of lecture "The Performativity of Children´s Urban Spaces"
    Leuphana University of Lüneburg

  • 04/2016 – 08/2016

    Social worker at a housing project for unaccompanied refugee minors
    Neues Wohnen im Kiez GmbH in Berlin

  • 09/2013 – 12/2015

    ERASMUS and field research in Istanbul (Turkey)
    Master thesis on ethnographical research project on children´s street play in the context of urban transformation in Istanbul
    Marmara University Istanbul

  • 10/2012 – 12/2015

    Master of Arts in Educational Science
    Free University of Berlin

Research Focus

    • Sociology of Childhood (Children´s Geographies)

    • Sociology of Space and Urban Sociology

    • Biographical Research

    • Visual Ethnography

Dissertation

»Spatial Figurations of Middle Class Childhoods in Nairobi and Berlin«

Based on the assumption that childhood is both, a social and processual construct, constituted by the spatial (re-)figuration of societies, the project carries out a spatial analysis of middle class childhoods.
The dissertation project investigates biographically and visually constituted spaces of past and present urban childhoods of three generations in Nairobi and Berlin.
In an attempt to not compare childhoods along dichotomic lines, like age groups or the nation-state and other territorially framed spaces, the explorative comparative design of the study is structured as a “countertopography” (Cindi Katz 2004).
Furthermore, the focus on middle-class childhoods aims to contribute to overcoming the (sociological) dichotomisation of the global south vs. the global north and the associated (re-)production of dualistic childhood concepts. Instead, the work wants to draw attention to the dialectical and constitutive power of global and local processes like mediatization, polycontextualization, and translocalization.

Research questions:

  • Which spaces do young and old people construct in speaking about their present and past childhoods?
  • To what extent can these spatial constitutions be understood as spatial figurations of childhoods and against the background of changing childhood concepts?
  • What kind of spaces do middle classes in Nairobi and Berlin create for their children and which concepts of the child and of childhood are they based on?

The theoretical figure of the biography and its connections to subjectivation theories frames the object of analysis of the empirical study and locates it at the intersection of the fields of sociology of space and childhood, critical urban studies and human geographies associated with the “material turn”.
The dissertation project is located in the CRC´s project area A “Spatial Knowledge” and is linked to the subproject “Biographies of the Middle Classes: Spatial Experience and Meaning in the Life Course Narrative” (A05).

Methods:

  • Narrative biographical interviews
  • Narrative Landscapes (mental maps)

Reference:

Katz, Cindi. 2004. Growing up Global. Economic Restructuring and Children´s Everyday Lives. University of Minnesota Press.

Publications

    • Mock, Claudia & Weidenhaus, Gunter (2022): „I want my child to become a world citizen“. Raum, Zeit und (Re)Produktion in kenianischen Mittelschichtsbiographien. In Johannes Becker, Gunter Weidenhaus, Nicole Witte (Hg.): Göttinger Beiträge zur soziologischen Biographieforschung: Biographie und Raum. Universitätsverlag Göttingen https://www.univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/handle/3/isbn-978-3-86395-530-4 .

    • Fegter, Susann & Mock, Claudia (2019): Children ́s Emotional Geographies of Well-being: The Cultural Constitution of Belonging(s) in the Context of Migration and Digital Technologies. In: Fattore, T.; Fegter, S.; Hunner-Kreisel, C. (2019): Qualitative Research on Children’s Well-being Across National and Cultural Contexts. International Journal of Emotional Education, Special Issue Volume 11(1),13 -30. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1213532

  • Lectures

    • 2022
      Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference, Newcastle University, August 30th to September 2nd 2022

      Paper: “Growing up Global at Home: Middle Classed Reprotopias in Global Entanglements”

      Session: “Classed Geographies in/of Childhood, Youth and Families (2)”, 30th August 2022

    • 2021
      The IX Conference on Childhood Studies: Childhood and Time, Tampere University, Finnland, May 10–13, 2021

      Paper: “Oral Histories and the Spatial Figurations of Middle-Class Childhoods in Nairobi and Berlin”

      Session: “Children and Childhood Over Time: Histories of Childhood and Temporal Structuring’s of Childhood Across Time and Spaces”

    • 2019
      Inaugural conference of Project SALMEA: Self-Accomplishment and Local Moralities in East Africa.
      “A Well-Led Life: Honor, Authority, and Wealth in East Africa”
      French Institute for Research in Africa IFRA,  July 25-26, 2019
      Paper: “Counter Narratives & Cartographies in Childhood Research in Nairobi and Berlin”

    • 2019
      First International Conference of the SFB 1265 – Re-Figuration of Spaces: Mediatization, Mobility, Globalization and Social Dislocation, 22.02.2019 Technische Universität Berlin
      Paper: „Narrating Space-Time: Biographies of Middle Classes“ (mit Gunter Weidenhaus)
      Panel: „Entanglement of Space and Time“

    • 2018
      Turkologentag 2018 – Third European Convention on Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies
      Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg, 19-21/09/2018
      Paper: “Children´s (Play-) Practices in the Context of the Re-Figuration of the Urban Space in Tarlabaşı (Istanbul): A Visual Ethnography”
      Panel: “(III) Urbanism”

    • 2018
      Research Fellow at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies
      “Genealogies of social differentiation and political contestation”
      Working Group of the Bayreuth Academy / Summer Term 2018, 03/07/2017
      Paper: “Biographical Spaces – An Intergenerational Outlook of Middle Classes in Kenya and Germany” (with Gunter Weidenhaus)

    • 2017
      6th Conference of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) – Children in a World of Opportunities – Innovations in Research, Policy and Practice
      Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 28-30/07/2017
      Paper: “Space as a Relational Concept – The Example of Heimat in Biographical Narrations of Children” (with Susann Fegter)
      Panel: “Children´s Concepts of Well-Being around the World – Comparative Perspectives“