Short Biography

Ryanne Flock studied China Studies, Sociology and Economics at Free University and Humboldt University Berlin. Subsequently, she worked as research associate at the DFG project “Megacities-Megachallenge. Informal Dynamics of Global Change” in Guangzhou, followed by a position as lecturer and coordinator of the master program Modern East Asian Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. Her research interest concentrates on China and its contemporary processes of modernization and urbanization, and the reciprocity of space and society. Her dissertation examined the social production of public space in Guangzhou in the course of appropriations and negotiations between the local state as well as street vendors, fortune tellers and beggars. In February 2021, she joined Subproject 1B "Social Worlds: China's Cities as Spaces of Worldmaking".

Research Project

In her research, Ryanne Flock focuses on urbanization in the context of private and public spaces in China and sinophone Malaysia. How does space function as a means of ordering social interaction and society? Which people, behaviours, symbols are excluded, included, or enabled? How do social worlds emerge in the interplay between space and society? Her studies on public space focuses primarily on everyday governance and urban poverty using the example of street vendors, fortune tellers and beggars. In addition, she examines housing as a means of interpersonal positioning, identity communication and as a process of social order. In doing so, she differentiates between state, pop-cultural and professional discourses and ideals as well as practices of housing in different social milieus.