Fixing Futures member Sophia Leipert will be appointed ‚Young Fellow‘ by the ‚Academic Society at the University of Frankfurt‘ in a ceremony on the 17 July 2026.

Each year, the Academic Society at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University selects doctoral students from the Goethe University Graduate Academy who have demonstrated outstanding academic achievement and an interest in interdisciplinary discourse to serve as ‘Young Fellows’ for a two-year term.

Sophia Leipert joined the RTG in 2025. Her research project explores processes of automation and infrastructural transformations in the context of maritime logistics, specifically in German ports. Her own interdisciplinary background in Architecture, Urban Studies, and Cultural Sciences shapes her interest in fostering dialogue and discussion not only within, but also across disciplinary boundaries. As a Young Fellow, she’s interested in the exchange between different disciplinary perspectives on technology, work, and societal change. Questions of automation concern not only economic efficiency or technical feasibility. They also raise fundamental questions about how technology is adopted, understood, and transformed in everyday life. To these dialogues, she brings an empirically grounded perspective on the concrete implementation of automation; that is, on those processes where technical transformations meet existing work practices, embodied knowledge, and organisational structures.