Faculty
Margarethe Kusenbach
Professor
CONTACT
Office: CPR 221
Phone: (813) 974-2595
Email
BIO
In 1993, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a Ph.D. degree in sociology. I had already earned an M.A. degree in sociology in my native country, Germany, under the supervision of Thomas Luckmann, co-author of the classic "The Social Construction of Reality," and was looking for more training in interpretive theories and qualitative methods—besides looking for adventure far from home. When I left Germany in my mid-twenties, I never imagined that I would live in LA for many years, start a family, pursue a career in the US, settle down in Florida, and become an American citizen--in short, create a new home for myself on the other side of the Atlantic. Alas, here I am! While I’m more of an "accidental" immigrant to the US compared with many others, I am a first generation immigrant nonetheless and it is not completely surprising that the sociological subareas of space and place, identity, and emotions—and more specifically issues of "home" and "belonging" at their intersection—have emerged as my primary research interests, at least for the time being.
Having been a typical graduate student and junior scholar, my substantive interests within sociology have shifted considerably over the years: from conversational structures to lived experience, from gender to urban neighborhoods, from deviance to disasters. Like most colleagues, I have arrived at my current research topics by taking the long road, and I’m looking forward to some more traveling in the future. However, what has remained constant throughout my scholarly journey is my fascination with learning, applying, and further developing interpretive—or what some call "symbolic interactionist"—theories , and a lingering curiosity about qualitative, and especially ethnographic, research methods. These related perspectives have always been my sociological home, long before I discovered "home" as an actual research topic.
In my case, being a sociologist means I am much more interested in learning about the lives of other people than in exploring my own experience. Already as kid, I was fascinated by what other people do, how they look like and talk to each other, and I still have to be told not to "stare." While I don’t draw much on my personal life in my work, I still believe my own experiences with mobility and creating new homes have lead me to ask, and hopefully understand, how other people adapt to unfamiliar social and physical environments, and how they come to belong (or not) within new places and communities—something that is especially challenging for people who are socially marginalized and live under precarious economic conditions. Currently, I'm in the process of writing a book based on in-depth research I have conducted over several years (with the help of many USF undergraduate and graduate students) about issues of identity and community among people living in mobile homes and mobile home communities within the Tampa Bay region. In 2013, I co-edited a book titled "Home: International Perspectives on Culture, Identity, and Belonging" with Krista Paulsen.
In 2022, I co-edited a book with Routledge titled Climate Cultures in Europe and North America: New Formations of Environmental Knowledge and Action with Thorsten Heimann, Jamie Sommer, and Gabriela Christmann. Over the past few years, while I am still very interested in home and belonging and continue to be rooted in the interpretive paradigm, I have expanded my scholarly interest in environment and disasters, as well as starting new comparative research on graffiti, street art, and urban politics.
I enjoy working with graduate and undergraduate students in sociology and other disciplines, teaching a range of courses, organizing sessions and conferences, collaborating with colleagues from various departments, and catching up with friends in the US and other countries, including fellow members of the "Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction," an organization that is just as interesting as it sounds.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., University of California - Los Angeles, 2003