Kalle Kappner

Kalle Kappner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), specializing in urban, regional, health and historical economics. He previously held teaching positions at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2016-2022) where he served as a teaching assistant for graduate-level courses on European Economic History and developed seminars in economic geography.

Dr. Kappner earned his PhD in economics from the Berlin School of Economics and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2021. His doctoral work, titled Water and the Micro-Geography of the Urban Mortality Transition: Essays on 19th Century Berlin, focused on the relationship between sanitation infrastructure and urban health outcomes during the 19th century.

His primary research interests lie at the intersection of urban, regional, health and historical economics, with a particular focus on the economic consequences of 19th-century epidemic diseases. He employs empirical methods and works extensively with historical spatial data to examine how epidemics like cholera affected urban development patterns, population dynamics, and infrastructure investments. His work often combines economic history with spatial analysis techniques, including GIS mapping and micro-geographic data extraction from historical sources.

Dr. Kappner's publications reveal a consistent focus on how epidemics shape urban development and infrastructure decisions. His research spans multiple disciplines, connecting economic history with public health, urban planning, and spatial economics. A recurring theme across his work is the examination of how cities responded to health crises through infrastructure investments, particularly water and sanitation systems, and how these responses varied based on political, economic, and social factors.

His scientific recognition includes:

• Department-wide teaching prize for best seminar at HU Berlin (2021)
• Short-listed for university-wide Humboldt teaching prize (2018)
• Listed first in economics department for teaching excellence (2018)

At LMU Munich, Dr. Kappner teaches graduate-level courses in Urban Economics, Advanced Economic History (co-taught with Lukas Rosenberger), and Epidemics in Economic History. He has also been a co-organizer of the annual AGORA Summer School in Philosophy, Politics and Economics since 2016, and was a regular contributor to the Institute for Research in Economic and Fiscal Issues (IREF). His methodological expertise includes spatial data science and the development of algorithms for extracting and referencing historical geographic data, as demonstrated in his work on Berlin city directories.