These pages present my research on how newcomers and others engage with each other in urban spaces around the globe, struggle with and value difference or compare convivialities - ways of living together. Knowledges from around the globe enter into conversation to understand hierarchies and challenge inequalities, contest what is taken for granted, forge consensuses, and celebrate life in its plurality.
Urban wood/s
Urban inequality in a material world finds expression in living and dead wood, apparent in myriad urban forms: from signs to distinction, through urban greening, to precarious housing.
Portarias
Entry halls and their employees in condominium blocks are living archives of urban knowledge on inequality, intimacy, and hospitality.
Valued Difference
Assembling social hierarchies in Rio de Janeiro when newcomers from Africa and Europe arrive in the 21st century.
Comparing Conviviality
Living with difference in Casamance (Senegal) and Catalonia (Spain). Changing the debate on "integration".
Publications
See, read, and download my publications.
Events
Find out where I will be speaking next, and where I have spoken and participated in the past.
Educating
Research and teaching come together; my teaching entangles multiple aspects of the social and political in the everyday
About me
I am Tilmann HEIL, a social scientist interested in inequality, urban change, migration, and conviviality.
News
Find some inspiration on my emerging and passing thoughts.