Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography Institute News
New staff members in economic geography: Anne-Sophie Kagel and Christoph Friedrich

New staff members in economic geography: Anne-Sophie Kagel and Christoph Friedrich

A.-S. Kagel and C. Friedrich

Since January 2022, Anne-Sophie Kagel has been working as a research assistant in the DUI.REG research project of Prof. Dr. Sternberg in the Department of Economic Geography at the Leibniz University in Hanover. Together with Christoph Friedrich, she conducts research in cooperation with the University of Göttingen, the University of Jena and the Volkswirtschaftlichen Institut für Mittelstand und Handwerk, on the subject of innovation processes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The project has a duration of three years and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Her task is to qualitatively contextualize the survey results in twelve regions in Germany and to highlight region-specific differences.

Structurally weak regions and, in particular, economic development in these regions are at the center of Ms. Kagel's research interests. She finds the approaches of application-oriented research particularly exciting. Ms. Kagel previously studied for her bachelor's and master's degrees at the Humboldt University zu Berlin. For the data collection of her master's thesis she was at the University of California Irvine (UCI) in the USA and investigated a potential solution for urban food deserts through online food delivery services as part of digitization. During her studies, Ms. Kagel worked, among other things, as a student assistant in the department of economic geography at the Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Leibniz Institute for Spatial Social Research in Erkner. She worked with both quantitative and qualitative methods.


Christoph Friedrich has been working as a research associate in the joint project DUI.REG of Prof. Dr. Sternberg in the Department of Economic Geography of the Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography at the Leibniz university Hanover since January 2022. In addition, the Georg August University Göttingen, the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Institute for Small Business Economics (ifh) at the University Göttingen are involved in the project. Together with Anne-Sophie Kagel, he is conducting research about innovation modes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for its duration from 2022 to 2025. Mr. Friedrich's task in the project is to contextualize survey results by collecting semi-structured interviews in twelve German study regions and to map different perceptions of the regional innovation environment.

Mr. Friedrich's primary research interests are intra- and interorganizational learning processes in structurally weak regions. He studied for his bachelor's degree at the Philipps University of Marburg and for his master's degree at the Georg August University of Göttingen. In his master's thesis, he examined the development of regional knowledge transfer at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development from 1992 to the present. Mr. Friedrich wrote his thesis in the context of the research project IreWiNE, for which he was also employed as a student assistant at the Chair of Economic Policy and SME Research at the University of Göttingen. In doing so, he familiarized himself with qualitative social science methodology, in particular the methodology of qualitative content analysis.

Published by A.-S. Kagel; C. Friedrich