Martin Severin Frandsen

My research revolves around what I term epoch-typical problems in urban planning. Among these my focus is on three interrelated urban questions – the question of participation, the question of segregation and disadvantaged urban areas and the question of sustainability. I am interested in how these questions can be understood in different ways and how different problematizations lead to different answers.

As theoretical perspectives I draw on deweyan pragmatic inquiry, foucauldian genealogies of problematizations and the french pragmatic sociology of critique and moral conflict. I combine these three approaches in an overall methodology termed genealogical pragmatism that combines historical interrogations of the emergence and transformation of problems and problematizations with action research and collaborative experiments in working out problem solutions.        

I am the study director of The Humanities and Technology Bachelor program (HumTek). Alongside I teach in the subject module in Plan, By & Proces, in the Danish master program in By & Plan as well as the international master program in Nordic Urban Planning Studies.

I am affiliated with the PhD School of People and Technology as a PhD supervisor and course teacher.