After successful completion of the course, students are able to:
- critically engage with issues of inequality in the context of urban and regional research
- delineate a topic area in a manageable way
- present the core findings of the existing literature on the topic area
- develop a clear research question
- select research methods appropriate to the research question (e.g.: statistical analyses, spatial visualisations, qualitative analyses, theoretical work, ...)
- analyse the results of their research work
- independently write a scientific paper according to generally accepted scientific criteria.
Inequality has many dimensions that manifest themselves in space. The course introduces students to different understandings of inequality and illustrates spatially relevant disparities. Subsequently, the students deal with one aspect of inequality in more detail, choose a research question and write their Bachelor's thesis on this research question.
Possible topics for the Bachelor's thesis can be, but are not limited to: Country financial equalisation, EU cohesion policy, left behind places, GDP, environmental inequality, income inequality, unequal access to public transport, unequal access to social infrastructure, etc.
The Bachelor thesis can be written both as theory or literature work as well as an empirically based work, for example through a case study or statistical analysis.
Exemplary literature
- Bathelt, H., & Glückler, J. (2018). Kapitel 4.4 Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Messung räumlicher Verteilungen. In: Bathelt, H., & Glückler, J. (2018). Wirtschaftsgeographie. Stuttgart: Ulmer.
- Glaeser, E. L., Kahn , M. E., & Rappaport, J. (2008). Why do the poor live in cities? The role of public transportation. Journal of Urban Economics, 63, 1-24.
- Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2018). The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it). Cambridge journal of regions, economy and society, 11(1), 189-209.
- Abreu, M., & Öner, Ö. (2020). Disentangling the Brexit vote: the role of economic, social and cultural contexts in explaining the UK’s EU referendum vote. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(7), 1434-1456.
- Neufeld, M. (2017). Eine Frage des Maßstabs? zum Verhältnis von Kohäsion und Polarisierung in Europa. Europa regional, 23(4), 15-29
- Ganzleben, C., & Kazmierczak, A. (2020). Leaving no one behind–understanding environmental inequality in Europe. Environmental Health, 19(1), 1-7.
