Topics for final theses

On this page you will find the topics on which the staff of the Chair of Human Geography prefer to supervise theses. You are welcome to draw inspiration from them. In principle, you can always contact us with your own topic suggestions.

Dr. Andreas Ortner:

  • Current challenges in spatial planning and spatial development

  • Instruments and stakeholders in urban planning and development

  • Assessing the resilience of locations and climate adaptation measures
  • Safeguarding services of general interest and creating equal living conditions

Michael Krell:

Political geographies of the extreme right:

  • The spatial impact of protest events

  • Discourses on town and country, nation, region and spatial identity
  • Specific party policies in the areas of housing, transportation, energy and geopolitics
  • Ethnic settler communities and citizens of the Reich
  • Local politics and effects on rural regions
  • Historical geography: the importance of spatial concepts under National Socialism

Dr. Frank Meyer:

Methodological focus:

  • Systematic literature research and analysis,

  • qualitative work (e.g. interviews, group discussions),
  • standardized surveys using questionnaires,
  • Mixed methods approaches,
  • Participatory approaches

Political geography (Germany, Europe, global):

  • Systematic literature review of recent research in psychology on "regional mentalities",
  • Systematic literature analyses on nation-building processes (e.g. historical, post-Yugoslavian, post-Soviet),
  • Electoral disparities in different countries,
  • Discourse analyses on populism, especially from non-European regions,
  • Content and discourse analysis of national imaginations and stereotypes in media debates and political debates (keyword: BILD campaign on "the Greeks"),
  • Argumentation analysis of the debate on the centralization and coordination role of the EU,
  • Content analysis of election programs or plenary minutes of the European Parliament of Eurosceptic parties,
  • Systematic literature analysis on the connection between austerity policy and Covid19 in affected countries,
  • New forms of pseudo-sovereign groupings,
  • systematic literature analysis or document analysis on the accession process of Ukraine, Georgia or Moldova,
  • Systematic literature analysis on ecological and/or geopolitical causes of flight using an example (e.g. Syria),
  • Image or video analysis of the media representation of external borders in the press or film (e.g. Sicario),
  • Any topics in the field of regionalist autonomy and independence movements,
  • Any topics in the field of indigenous minorities,
  • Any topics in the field of Arctic Geopolitics,
  • Any work on sovereign citizens from a non-German context,
  • historiographical systematic literature analysis on the development of the right of secession in international law (e.g. from 1920, from 1946),
  • systematic literature analysis on the debate and examples of "remedial secession",
  • Systematic literature analysis on the concepts of nation, people, ethnicity, etc. in international law,
  • Systematic literature analysis on the work of the so-called Badinter Commission and its interpretation from 1999 onwards (Kosovo, Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine),
  • Systematic literature analysis on specific historical cases or the dissolution of Yugoslavia,
  • Systematic literature analysis on space geopolitics,
  • Document analysis (e.g. plenary minutes) on measures and votes on the promotion of space geopolitics in the EU,
  • systematic literature analysis on drone geopolitics and other new armament policies (e.g. SatComm, ...),
  • systematic literature analysis for case studies on resource conflicts concerning water, energy, rare earths, etc,
  • systematic literature analysis on the question of international military operations to secure trade routes

Economic geography:

  • Literature review on global and national trade flows in various special goods; e.g. medical products, art goods, weapons, precious stones, resources

Religious geography:

  • Ecclesiastical restructuring and parish layoffs as a result of shrinking and secularization processes in various regions and countries
  • New forms of religiosity and spirituality or new forms and examples of religious groups

Social geography:

  • Regional or group-related stigmatization and attribution processes
  • Perspectives of young people on social and regional processes: e.g. migration considerations of young people in rural regions
  • Peripheralization and socio-spatial polarization in Germany, e.g. mobility in rural regions, services of general interest
  • New forms of social movements

Peter Rothe:

Veganism, nutrition and food:

  • Veganism and space

  • Places of consumption
  • Media coverage
  • Public and political debates
  • Companies, production and/or distribution
  • Nutrition and indigeneity
  • Discourse shaping and reality formation

Political geography:

  • (area of tension) Rurality and urbanity
  • Legislation
  • Borders
  • (Spatial) identity
  • Spatial organization of power and inequality
  • Critical, ecological, feminist, etc. Spatial productions

Dr. Mathias Siedhoff:

Topics on

  • geographies of population
  • urban geographies
  • geographies of social and socio-spatial inequality and transformations
  • economic geographies

About this page

Mathias Siedhoff
Last modified: Nov 26, 2025