Denis Zeković is a social geographer whose research sits at the intersection of migration studies and urban governance, with a particular focus on everyday negotiations. He studied Sociology, Political Science, and Islamic Studies at the University of Tübingen before completing a Research Master in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
His doctoral research at Chemnitz University of Technology, supervised by Birgit Glorius, examines arrival and reception processes in German medium-sized cities. At its core, the project asks how municipalities respond to large-scale migration — particularly in the contexts of 2015 and 2022 — and how these processes shape local coexistence in the long term. Conceptually, he combines a resilience perspective on local governance with the notion of arrival infrastructures and research on conviviality and the local production of belonging. A particular focus is placed on how public spaces in medium-sized cities become sites of everyday negotiation of difference and belonging. Empirically, he conducts a comparative study of one West German and one East German city, drawing primarily on ethnographic methods.
His research is embedded in several ongoing collaborative projects. At Chemnitz University of Technology, he works with international partners within the REFRAME project to reconceptualise arrival as a structurally embedded urban process beyond crisis narratives. His affiliation with the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) dates back to the summer of 2022, when he first joined as an exchange student on the VISION project, where he completed his master's thesis. He subsequently continued at DeZIM on a project focused on resilient municipalities, conducting online workshops with integration officers across Germany and analysing how local actors develop room for manoeuvre despite limited resources. He is now involved in the project "Arriving in Germany", maintaining ongoing exchange with municipalities and contributing to qualitative data collection.
Methodologically, Denis Zeković works primarily with qualitative methods (including interviews, participatory mapping, and ethnography) and has a growing interest in quantitative text analysis.
Research focus
- Arrival and reception in multi-level governance
- Belonging, boundary-making, and the local production of migration
- Conviviality and everyday negotiations of difference
- Qualitative methods and ethnography