Short Vita
Sophia Leipert (she/her) is an interdisciplinary urban researcher at the intersection of urban studies, economic geography and STS. She studied Architecture (B.Sc.) and Urban Design (M.Sc.) in Wuppertal, Istanbul, Hamburg, and Milan. Following her role as a research associate at the chair of Cultural and Spatial Theories at HafenCity University Hamburg, she is now a doctoral researcher in the DFG-funded Research Training Group “Fixing Futures: Technologies of Anticipation in Contemporary Societies.” Her research interests include socio-technical configurations, histories of labour and technology, genealogies of political ideas, political economy, and maritime logistics. She also hosts a monthly radio show exploring urban politics and theory.
Project Description
Ports are critical nodes within global logistics networks. Each one constitutes a socio-technical complex, locally situated yet embedded in broader political-economic power relations. As sites of circulation, ports are currently undergoing profound transformations in response to overlapping crises and increasing global instabilities. While they promise the seamless flow of commodities, ideas, and people, they are also spaces marked by frictions, disruptions, and controversy. The handling of goods in/of the future is increasingly shaped by the broad processes of digitalisation, automation, and deregulation. These processes are frequently accompanied by precarious working conditions and contested visions of infrastructural progress. The PhD project “Futuring Circulation: Socio-Technical Configurations of Digitalisation, Automation and Labour in the Port of Hamburg” explores the promises and politics of infrastructural transformation in the context of the Port of Hamburg. It asks: What modes of governing, forms of labour relations, and spatial (re)figurations emerge with/through the smart and automated port? Drawing on approaches from economic and cultural geography, STS, (new) materialisms and governmentality studies, the project analyses how automation and digitalisation of port infrastructure, especially container terminals, are being realised.
Publications
Book chapters
Leipert S, (forthcoming) “The Port, That Is Us”: Automation Processes and Labor Dynamics in the Port of Hamburg. In: Bassett M, Kwong C M, James R (eds) Ports Cities in Comparative Global History.
Leipert S, Bartolotti, F (forthcoming) Becoming smart: Projects and projections of digital transformations in Marseille’s port spaces. In: Mitsud W, Tommarchi E (eds) Liquid Port Cities of the Twenty first Century: A Pan Mediterranean Perspective on Cultural Confluences and Contemporary Challenges.
Leipert, S (2025) Governing with/through Smart Ports. Contested infrastructural spatialities in the port of Hamburg. In: Regula Valérie Burri, Hanna Göbel, Inga Reimers (eds.) Grounding Digitalization. Technologies, Materialities, and Spaces
Journal articles
Leipert S. (2025) (Re)producing smart urban spaces: A relational perspective on infrastructures of communication. Digital Geography & Society. DOI: 10.1016/j.diggeo.2025.100135
Book reviews
Leipert S (2025) Book review: Infrastructuring urban futures: the politics of remaking cities. Urban Research & Practice. DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2025.2527730
Leipert, S (2025) Ask Kristine and Søraa Roger A. (2024) Digitalization and Social Change: a Guide in Critical Thinking. Science & Technology Studies. 2025-09-15 | Journal article. DOI: 10.23987/sts.147014
non-academic
Leipert, S., Manz, N. (2024) Turmbau zu Hamburg: „Euer Ruin ist unser Gewinn“. Común #9. https://comun-magazin.org/turmbau-zu-hamburg-euer-ruin-ist-unser-gewinn/