Alina is a cultural sociologist specializing in qualitative research methodologies and methods as well as historical sociology.
Since 11/2025, she has been a PostDoc at the research project “CryoCultures. Infrastructures, Politics and Futures of Artificial Cooling”. At CryoCultures, her research focuses on ethnographies of the artificial cold, particularly in the domains of food and space cooling. Aiming to explore how cooling technologies unfold in practice, her research pays attention to the historical genealogies and material manifestations of cooling practices as well as the modes through which they are sustained and maintained.
Before joining CryoCultures, Alina held positions at the Chair of Interpretative Methods (Prof. Dr. Thomas Scheffer) and the Chair of Sociological Theory and the History of Theory (Prof. Dr. Doris Schweitzer) at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Alina earned her PhD in Cultural Sociology from the University of Leipzig. Drawing on historical discourse analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, her dissertation traces continuities and discontinuities in the discourses, materialities, and practices that have shaped libraries since the mid-19th century – not only as public institutions of knowledge but as material and architectural environments.
She is an associated researcher of the Collaborative Research Center “Refiguration of Spaces” (CRC 1265) in Berlin, part of the DFG-funded scientific network “Law in the Anthropocene” (RiA) as well as a member of the Network for Architectural Research and the Section for Cultural Sociology within the German Sociological Association.
Publications
Wandelt, Alina (2025): Bibliotheken im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung: eine historische Architektursoziologie. Frankfurt / New York: Campus Verlag. doi:10.12907/978-3-593-46149-6.
Wandelt, Alina (2024): „Wohnen erzählen? Potenziale und Grenzen narrativ-biografischer Interviews
zur Erhebung von Wohnbiografien“, in: Wohnen erforschen: Method(olog)ische Zugänge und
forschungspraktische Reflexionen. doi: 10.14361/9783839474648
Wandelt, Alina (2023): „Editorial“ in: Soziologiemagazin. Sonderheft, 8, Soziologien des Wohnens
heute: 6-11. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8131201
Wandelt, Alina/Schmidt-Lux, Thomas (2022): “Infinite Expansion, Unlimited Access, Encompassing Comfort. An Analysis of the Effects of Digitalization in Libraries after 1995”, in: Historical Social Research 47 (3): 202-230. https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.47.2022.31
Wandelt, Alina/Schmidt-Lux, Thomas (2022): “Architektur als Heilmittel? Corona und die Mikroarchitekturen der Pandemie”, Blog des Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe). https://recentglobe.hypotheses.org/770
Coughlan, Johannes/Wandelt, Alina (2021): “Collective Review: Current Approaches in Germanspeaking Sociology: Navigating Agency and Experience”, in: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung
Wandelt, Alina/Schmidt-Lux, Thomas (2021): „Mikroarchitekturen der Pandemie: Räume des Arbeitens in Zeiten von Corona“, in: Covid-19: Sinn in der Krise: Kulturwissenschaftliche Analysen der Corona-Pandemie. De Gruyter, S. 183–204. doi: 10.1515/9783110734942.
Wandelt, Alina (2021) „Algorithmische Gouvernementalität am Beispiel von OKCupid. Forschungsbericht“, online verfügbar auf dem Publikationsserver der Universität Leipzig: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-757387
Kellermann, Sascha/Wandelt, Alina (2019): “Reclaim the Smart Home”, in: Kritisch Lesen, 2019 Gebaute Gesellschaft/Nr. 51.
Wandelt, Alina (2018): Critique as (preceding) Political Autonomy, in: Phoenix Journal of Philosophy, Jg./Issue 1.
Anheier, Helmut K./Koyro, Charlotte/Heede, Alexis/Berneaud-Kötz, Malte/Wandelt, Alina/Rheinbay, Janna (2017): Gender Equality Policy in the Arts, Culture and Media. Comparative Perspectives. Forschungsbericht. Berlin: Hertie School of Governance.