Public Talk: Co-designing Cities Supporting Mental Health
with DR. OLA SÖDERSTRÖM, Emeritus Professor in Social and Cultural Geography, University of Neuchâtel
November 6, 2025
5:00 – 7:00 PM
Hörsaal 605, Marsstr. 20–22, 80335 München
Join us for an exciting talk about interdisciplinary approaches to cities, health, and methods in urban research!
Urban mental health has in recent years become a research field where interesting and contested new alliances between the life sciences and the social sciences have been established. On the one hand, over the past twenty years, a growing number of studies in psychiatry have investigated urban dimensions of psychosis (‘urbanicity’). This research has progressively moved beyond classic forms of spatial epidemiology to investigate urban mental health in situ, using for instance smartphone-enabled momentary assessments. On the other hand, building on previous work on the ethnographies, sociologies and geographies of mental health, studies in the social sciences have recently begun to develop mobile biosocial methods to study urban ecologies of mental health. Situated at this interdisciplinary juncture between life sciences and social sciences, Ola Söderström’s talk will first draw on two previous projects, using video-recorded walk-alongs and bio-sensory ethnographies, to study how participants living with a diagnosis of psychosis experience urban milieus. Second, he will explain how his group moved from the results of these studies to a present participatory action research where they are implementing an urban living lab in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland. This living lab uses participatory mapping to elaborate and experiment urban interventions aiming to foster a milieu more favourable for a recovery from psychosis. He will conclude reflecting on three broader issues related to this research: porous boundaries between bodies and environments in new geographies of health, interdisciplinary co-laboration, and the development of ‘psy commons’.
The event is hosted by the TUM Innovation Network for Neurotechnology in Mental Health (NEUROTECH) and the Science and Technology Policy Research Group at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology.