Franziska Görmar

Franziska Görmar is a Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL) in Leipzig, Germany, specializing in the Regional Geography of Europe. She has been with the institute since November 2013 and focuses on understanding regional development processes, particularly in peripheral and post-industrial contexts across Europe.

Her research interests span multiple geographies of regional and local development, with particular emphasis on peripherization processes, industrial heritage, and the dynamics of small and medium-sized cities. She investigates how cultural narratives, place identity, and collaborative economic models shape regional transformation, especially in East Germany's former industrial regions.

Görmar's publication record demonstrates a consistent focus on understanding how communities navigate economic transitions, with recent work examining place-making in old-industrial towns, relational imaginaries in small towns, and the impacts of collaborative workspaces in rural areas. Her research often employs comparative approaches across European contexts, particularly examining mining towns and peripheral regions.

She has been involved in numerous research projects including Driving Inclusive Care: Economic Democracy and Social Economy (DICES), x-Inno Radar, KulturLandBilder, and Building transformative capacities to activate regional innovation systems (ATRAKTIV). Previously, she contributed to projects such as Regional SPHERES, CORAL (on collaborative workspaces), Agents of change in old-industrial regions in Europe (ACORE), and studies on local democracy in small and medium-sized cities.

Her methodological approach combines qualitative analysis of cultural narratives with spatial analysis of regional development patterns, contributing significantly to understanding how peripheral regions can develop transformative pathways despite structural challenges.