Staff profile

I am an Associate 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 Europe
• anthropology of the future
• anthropology of time
• postindustrial urban regeneration
• postsocialist anthropology
• social sustainability
• urban anthropology
• urban sustainability

Authored book

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

Chapter in book

• Ringel, F. (2021). Future-Making in Times of Urban Sustainability: Maintenance and Endurance as Progressive Alternatives in the Postindustrial Era. In M. Kazubowski-Houston, & M. Auslander (Eds.), In Search of Lost Futures (129-149). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63003-4_6
• Ringel, F. (2021). Contextualising Expectations: Reconfiguring Progressive Politics in the Post-Industrial Era. In E. Kirtsoglou, & B. Simpson (Eds.), The time of anthropology : studies of contemporary chronopolitics. Routledge
• Ringel, F. (2020). Sensing late-liberal state failure: Ecologies of resistance in a post-industrial German city. In A. Dundon, & R. Vokes (Eds.), Shifting States: New Perspectives on Security, Infrastructure, and Political Affect. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003086673
• Ringel, F. (2018). Class, CO2 and urban climate change mitigation: On saving energy in a post-industrial German city. In A. Szolucha (Ed.), Energy, Resource Extraction and Society: Impacts and Contested Futures (124-139). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351213943
• Ringel, F. (2018). The Production of Indeterminacy: On the Unforeseeable Futures of Postindustrial Excess. In C. Alexander, & A. Sanchez (Eds.), Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination (1-210). Berghahn Journals
• Ringel, F. (2015). Neue Gegenwärtigkeit in Hoyerswerda: Zur Anthropologie und Zukunft Ostdeutschlands. In Der Osten (141-167). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-06401-3_7

Journal Article

• Ringel, F. (2023). Beyond outmigration: Im/mobilities and futures in peripheral postindustrial cities. Mobilities, https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2023.2209829
• Ringel, F. (2022). The time of post-socialism: On the future of an anthropological concept. Critique of Anthropology, 42(2), 191-208. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275x221095930
• Ringel, F. (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. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758211052115
• Ringel, F. (2021). Tides of Concrete: Sensing Infrastructural Times in a Former Socialist Model City. Roadsides, 006, 72-80. https://doi.org/10.26034/roadsides-202100610
• Ringel, F. (2021). Postsocialist Dialectics or Postindustrial Critique? On Discomfort in a Former Socialist Model City in East Germany. Europe-Asia Studies, 73(9), 1748-1767. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2021.1998380
• Ringel, F. (2020). Ruins of pre-gentrification: Schrotthäuser and urban standstill in a postindustrial city. Time & Society, 29(2), 563-580. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463x20906652
• Ringel, F. (2020). Brexit as postindustrial critique. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 10(2), 361-366. https://doi.org/10.1086/709780
• Ringel, F. (2018). On expectations in the aftermath of the ‘refugee crisis’: Ethnographic prospects from a post-industrial German city. Anthropology Today, 34(3), 26-28. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12437
• Ringel, F. (2016). Beyond temporality: Notes on the anthropology of time from a shrinking fieldsite. Anthropological Theory, 16(4), 390-412. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499616659971
• Ringel, F. (2016). Can Time Be Tricked? - A Theoretical Introduction. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34(1), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2016.340104
• Moroşanu, R., & Ringel, F. (2016). Time-Tricking - A General Introduction. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34(1), 17-21. https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2016.340103
• Ringel, F. (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. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12093
• Ringel, F. (2013). Differences in Temporal Reasoning: Temporal complexity and generational clashes in an East German city. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2013(66), 25-35. https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2013.660103
• Ringel, F. (2013). Epistemic Collaborations in Contexts of Change: On conceptual fieldwork and the timing of anthropological knowledge
• Ringel, F. (2012). Towards Anarchist Futures? - Creative presentism, vanguard practices and anthropological hopes. Critique of Anthropology, 32(2), 173-188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275x12437979

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Ringel, F. (2019). Sustainability as Orientation: Towards Sustainable Urban Futures. [[Media unknown]]