Andreas Pott

Prof. Dr. Andreas Pott, born in 1968, has been Professor of Social Geography at Osnabrück University since 2007. Since completing his studies and academic qualifications in Bonn, London (UCL), Osnabrück and Frankfurt am Main, his academic work has been dedicated to the combination of spatial social research and interdisciplinary migration research. Osnabrück University offers excellent conditions for this with its proximity to  IMIS and the  Institute of Geography. From 2010 to 2020, Andreas Pott was Director of IMIS and was responsible, among other things, for the further development of the institute after the retirement of the founding generation and its transition into a university Research Center. Since 2021, he has served as Deputy Director of IMIS, and since 2022 also as Head of the Institute of Geography.

With the aim of strengthening networking and the institutional expansion of interdisciplinary migration research and intensifying its basic research, Andreas Pott has helped to establish various working contexts and research institutions: He is a founding member and former co-spokesperson (2009-2020) of the  Arbeitskreis für Geographische Migrationsforschung founding member and since 2018 Scientific Council of the  German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), deputy speaker of the DeZIM community, speaker of the  IMIS Research Training Group 'The Production of Migration' (2015-2018), initiator of the European Master's exchange program  EuMIGS, co-director of the Standing Committee established in 2019  Reflexivites in Migration Studies of the European research network IMISCOE and spokesperson of the  Collaborative Research Center 'Production of Migration' (SFB 1604) established in 2024.

Apart from the Collaborative Research Center, the research profile of the professorship is currently characterized by two focal points: (1) The research field Geographies of Migration explores the possibilities of migration research informed by spatial theory. It examines the social co-production of spaces and migration(s). This perspective draws attention to the organizing, stabilizing and other functions that space-related practices and observations have for the negotiation of conditions in migration society. (2) In close cooperation with international colleagues and non-academic practice partners, the professorship is also dedicated to questions of the production and circulation of migration knowledge. In the sense of reflexive migration research, it is of particular interest how migration research, with its problems, categories, concepts and expertise, is entangled in the social production of its subject matter - and what consequences this has.

In addition, Andreas Pott and his colleagues in the  Social Geography working group and the  research focus 'Society - Space - Migration' do research and publish on the social advancement of the children of immigrants, migration regimes, refugee studies, migration and the city, identity and cultural production in the migration society, maps of migration as well as tourism and cultural geographies of the city.