Dr. Melike Peterson

Melike Peterson is a postdoctoral researcher in urban geography at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen. Her research interests include everyday urban spaces, multicultural life, belonging, emotions and atmosphere, and feminist geographies. Her current research project 'Public Libraries and the Right to the City' explores the role of public libraries in contemporary urban society. For her PhD at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow, she explored everyday spaces of encounter such as cafes, community centres and public libraries as key sites of multicultural urban life in Glasgow. She also has a keen interest in creative and arts-based methods and their potential for finding new and alternative ways of working and communicating with communities outside of academia.

Melike Peterson was an incoming fellow from 5 to 13 June 2024, during which time she worked on a joint publication with Alexa Färber and Marion Hamm discussing public libraries as un/easy spaces of community. The paper will be published as part of the special issue 'The spatialities of community' in the journal Geographica Helvetica.