AW Alina is a cultural sociologist specializing in qualitative research methodologies and methods as well as historical sociology.
At CryoCultures, her research focuses on ethnographies of the artificial cold, particularly in the domains of food and space cooling. Aiming to explore how cooling technologies unfold in practice, her research pays attention to the historical genealogies and material manifestations of cooling practices as well as the modes through which they are sustained and maintained.
Before joining CryoCultures, Alina held positions at the Chair of Interpretative Methods (Prof. Dr. Thomas Scheffer) and the Chair of Sociological Theory and the History of Theory (Prof. Dr. Doris Schweitzer) at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Alina earned her PhD in Cultural Sociology from the University of Leipzig. Drawing on historical discourse analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, her dissertation traces continuities and discontinuities in the discourses, materialities, and practices that have shaped libraries since the mid-19th century – not only as public institutions of knowledge but as material and architectural environments.
She is an associated researcher of the Collaborative Research Center “Refiguration of Spaces” (CRC 1265) in Berlin, part of the DFG-funded scientific network “Law in the Anthropocene” (RiA) as well as a member of the Network for Architectural Research and the Section for Cultural Sociology within the German Sociological Association.