From 2014 to 2018, Leila Khodabakhsh studied regional planning at Allameh Tabataba'i University in Tehran, Iran. In her master's thesis, she analyzed the spatial organization of urban regions in the Iranian central desert, with special attention to the institutional role of water. In particular, she focused on the interaction of human communities with limited water resources in these areas. She shows how in the course of history an institutional environment and consequently a spatial order developed in accordance with environmental restrictions. Through the evolutionary research perspective on institutions, she was able to show how the specific, modern balance of power in the region led to a different logic in environmental and resource issues.

As part of her doctoral thesis, she deals with the relationship between water management, domination and space production in contemporary Iran. It examines how the various water supply methods in the Persian plateau influence the political, social and economic aspects of arid regions and how institutional changes in the last century changed the (political) landscape in the region through "expropriation".
  

Career

• Since 10/2019: PhD student in the Human Geography group at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
• 9 / 2014-2 / 2018: Master's degree in regional planning at Allameh Tabataba'i University Tehran. Master thesis on "the analysis of the spatial organization of the urban regions in the Iranian central desert with special consideration of the institutional role of water. Case study: the counties Ardakan and Meybod in the Iranian province Yazd"
• 9 / 2006-2 / 2011: Bachelor's degree in architecture from Isfahan Art University. Bachelor thesis on the topic "Shared apartment for migrant workers on the island of Kish, Iran"
   

Main areas of research

• Human-environment relationships from the perspective of political ecologyPolitical-ecological processes of space production in developing countries
• Institutional Theory and Social Historiography
• Environmental justice
• Water as a source of power
     

Regional focus

Middle East (especially Iran)
 

Courses in SS 2020

Seminar Introduction to Political Ecology (Module V5-H)