Staff profile

I am an Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at Durham University. My work focuses on time, sustainability and urban development in postindustrial Europe. 

My first monograph Back to the Postindustrial Future: An Ethnography of Germany’s Fastest-Shrinking City (2018, Berghahn) investigates the effects of severe population shrinkage in the German city of Hoyerswerda. It documents how the inhabitants of a city “without a future” regain their futures, providing the first ethnography of a shrinking city and new approaches to the anthropological study of the future.

I am currently writing my second monograph, After Sustainability: An Anthropological Investigation of a ‘Climate City’ in Crisis. This explores the efforts of Bremerhaven, another postindustrial German city, to make itself sustainable in the wake of Germany’s recent halt in its transition to renewable energies.

I have co-edited a special issue on ‘Time-Tricking’ (2016, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology), and published various journal articles and book chapters (please see below for details). In the future, I’m planning two research projects, one on the ongoing transition to a post-carbon future in Germany's oil and gas industry, and another one on social sustainability. What is social sustainability, and how is it sustained in the context of ongoing welfare state and austerity crises? 

I have been interviewed at various points throughout my career by newspapers, including The New York Times, TheGuardian and Die Zeit. In Hoyerswerda I was involved with various outreach activities, including the AnthroCamp, a research camp for urban youth in Hoyerswerda (video here); and the Malplatte, a sociocultural art project (short film here). In Bremerhaven I am involved with applied projects on on climate change and CO2 reduction (I was interviewed on these projects here).

Previously, I studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge for my PhD (2012). Afterwards I held a fixed-term lectureship (Habilitationsstelle) at the University of Vienna (2012-2016) and a Marie Curie Fellowship at Durham University (2016-2019). My work has been supported by several funding bodies, including the Fulbright Foundation; the Economic and Social Research Foundation, UK; the German National Study Foundation; and the Marie Curie Foundation.

Other

Felix Ringel: "Futures all around" presentation

• anthropology of time
• anthropology of the future
• urban anthropology
• anthropology of Europe
• urban sustainability
• social sustainability
• postindustrial urban regeneration
• postsocialist anthropology

• Social Anthropology

Authored book

• Ringel, F. (2018). Back to the Postindustrial Future: An Ethnography of Germany's Fastest Shrinking City. Berghahn Books.

Chapter in book

• Ringel, Felix (2021). Future-Making in Times of Urban Sustainability: Maintenance and Endurance as Progressive Alternatives in the Postindustrial Era. In In Search of Lost Futures. Kazubowski-Houston M. & Auslander M. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 129-149.
• Ringel, Felix (2021). Contextualising Expectations: Reconfiguring Progressive Politics in the Post-Industrial Era. In The Time of Anthropology: Studies of Contemporary Chronopolitics. Kirtsoglou, Elisabeth & Simpson, Bob Routledge.
• Ringel, Felix (2020). Sensing late-liberal state failure: Ecologies of resistance in a post-industrial German city. In Shifting States: New Perspectives on Security, Infrastructure, and Political Affect. Dundon, Alison & Vokes, Richard London: Routledge.
• Ringel, Felix (2018). Class, CO2 and urban climate change mitigation: On saving energy in a post-industrial German city. In Energy, Resource Extraction and Society: Impacts and Contested Futures. Szolucha, Anna London: Routledge. 124-139.
• Ringel, Felix (2018). The Production of Indeterminacy: On the Unforeseeable Futures of Postindustrial Excess. In Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination. Alexander, Catherine & Sanchez, Andrew Berghahn Publishers. 7: 1-210.
• Ringel, Felix (2015). Neue Gegenwärtigkeit in Hoyerswerda: Zur Anthropologie und Zukunft Ostdeutschlands. In Der Osten. Springer. 141-167.

Edited Journal

• Ringel, Felix & Morosanu, Roxana (2016). Time-Tricking: Reconsidering Temporal Agency in Troubled Times. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34 (1): Berghahn.

Journal Article

• Ringel, Felix (2023). Beyond outmigration: Im/mobilities and futures in peripheral postindustrial cities. Mobilities
• Ringel, Felix (2022). The time of post-socialism: On the future of an anthropological concept. Critique of Anthropology 42(2): 191-208.
• Ringel, Felix (2021). Postsocialist Dialectics or Postindustrial Critique? On Discomfort in a Former Socialist Model City in East Germany. Europe-Asia Studies 73(9): 1748-1767.
• Ringel, Felix (2021). Hope and the future: Temporal agency and the politics of hope in late capitalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39(5): 880-886.
• Ringel, Felix (2021). Tides of Concrete: Sensing Infrastructural Times in a Former Socialist Model City. Roadsides 006: 72-80.
• Ringel, Felix (2020). Ruins of pre-gentrification: Schrotthäuser and urban standstill in a postindustrial city. Time & Society 29(2): 563-580.
• Ringel, Felix (2020). Brexit as postindustrial critique. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10(2): 361-366.
• Ringel, Felix (2018). On expectations in the aftermath of the ‘refugee crisis’ Ethnographic prospects from a post-industrial German city. Anthropology Today 34(3): 26-28.
• Ringel, Felix (2016). Beyond temporality: Notes on the anthropology of time from a shrinking fieldsite. Anthropological Theory 16(4): 390-412.
• Moroşanu, Roxana & Ringel, Felix (2016). Time-Tricking - A General Introduction. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 34(1): 17-21.
• Ringel, Felix (2016). Can Time Be Tricked? - A Theoretical Introduction. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 34(1): 22-31.
• Ringel, Felix (2014). Post-Industrial Times and the Unexpected: Endurance and sustainability in Germany's fastest shrinking city. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20(S1): 52-70.
• Ringel, Felix (2013). Differences in Temporal Reasoning: Temporal complexity and generational clashes in an East German city. Focaal 2013(66): 25-35.
• Ringel, Felix (2013). Epistemic Collaborations in Contexts of Change: On conceptual fieldwork and the timing of anthropological knowledge. Laboratorium 5(2): 36-55.
• Ringel, Felix (2012). Towards Anarchist Futures? - Creative presentism, vanguard practices and anthropological hopes. Critique of Anthropology 32(2): 173-188.

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Ringel, Felix (2019). Sustainability as Orientation: Towards Sustainable Urban Futures. American Ethnologist website