Biography: Dr. Ariane Sept has been working as a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Erkner (near Berlin), department “Dynamics of Communication, Knowledge and Spatial Development” since October 2018. She also teaches at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. Her current research interests include social innovations, digitalization and volunteering in rural-peripheral areas, figurations of rurality, socio-spatial acceleration and deceleration as well as (European) urban and regional policies. In addition to her interests in content, she is particularly interested in methodological issues of spatial research.
After her graduation in urban and regional planning at TU Berlin in 2006 she has been a freelancer in Berlin and Rome working in the fields of dissemination and networking for Interreg IIIC projects, urban studies and public relations. From 2015 to 2018 she completed her PhD at the DFG graduate school “Innovation society today” at the Institute of Sociology of the TU Berlin with a thesis entitled “Slowing down in small and medium towns. Cittaslow as social innovation in urban development”.