Professor Heike J枚ns

PhD (University of Heidelberg)

Pronouns: She/her
  • Professor of Geography

Academic Career

  • 2018: Professor of Geography, 每日吃瓜
  • 2018: Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
  • 2016: Reader in Human Geography, 每日吃瓜
  • 2016: Research-informed Teaching Award (RiTA), 每日吃瓜
  • 2012: Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, 每日吃瓜
  • 2010: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
  • 2007: Lecturer in Human Geography, 每日吃瓜 
  • 2006: Olympia Morata Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Heidelberg 
  • 2005: Wissenschaftspreis für Anthropogeographie, Voss Foundation for Geography
  • 2004-2006: Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, University of Nottingham 
  • 2002-2004: Research Associate in the DFG research project Internationale Wissenschaftsbeziehungen funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), University of Heidelberg
  • 2002: PhD in Human Geography (Dr. phil.), University of Heidelberg
  • 1997-2002: PhD Researcher and Lecturer in Human Geography (0.5 part-time post as Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin), University of Heidelberg
  • 1997: Diplom-Geographin (Dipl.-Geog.), University of Heidelberg
  • 1992-1997: University studies of Geography with Geology and History of Art (Diplomstudiengang), University of Heidelberg

Heike Jöns’ research critically interrogates the geographies of academic mobilities, knowledge production, and the university. Most of Heike’s work has examined transnational academic mobilities and the related geographies of knowledge production from longitudinal historical and global perspectives, centred on institutions and academics in the Federal Republic of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the twentieth century.

Heike has been particularly interested in the role of academic travel for the rise and shift of global knowledge  and ; in subject-specific cultures of academic , , and ; in the mediators, experiences, and  of academic travel and how these vary by  and host countries, by gender ( and  mobility), by , by cultural background and , by , and by .

To the , Heike has contributed collaborative research on the ; on ; and on the . Ongoing research studies the role of academic travel in the emergence of the modern German research university, , and the modern US research university, .

Heike’s research has been informed by  that she has developed by synthesizing and elaborating on debates among protagonists of social constructivism, feminist science studies, and actor-network theory, using different . She has argued that from a geographical perspective, it is important to study how the geographies of academic mobilities and knowledge production vary across  and at .

Conceptualising triadic thought from a geographical perspective has informed the framing of the edited book  and enabled a critical interrogation of the relationship between in the German academic system, resulting in the suggestion of concrete, theoretically-informed reforms of the widely criticised academic career structures in German universities and other European countries.

Heike has explored twenty-first century trends in global higher education through a critical engagement with the uneven global geographies of knowledge production and exchange at and as these are represented through . She also published on recent geographical knowledge production in , , , and .

Heike’s early academic work examined  and church design in the Middle Ages, 300-1514, and bank branch development in , 1987-1999. Together with her PhD students, she has written about a triadic actor-network approach to ; the geographies of  in Brazil; and cultural homophily in UK home students’ evaluations of .

Heike's teaching examines transnational mobilities, globalisation, and the historical geographies of knowledge production. She is particularly interested in exploring path dependencies and path creations from global perspectives and in using different conceptual resources for explaining the role of mobilities for the highly uneven socioeconomic and very diverse cultural and political geographies in past and present knowledge economies.

Since 2007, Heike has supervised nine PhD researchers to completion. She is most interested in supervising historical geographical PhD research on mobilities, transnational networks, creative production, knowledge transfer, academic cultures, and the university.

  • Jöns, H (2025) Geographies, in A Cultural History of Higher Learning in the Age of Industry, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 37-58,
  • Jöns, H, Okorie, CA, Deakin-Smith, H, and Esson, J (2025) Critical geographies of professional careers: Contributions to the spatial turn in the social sciences, Globalisation, Societies and Education 23 (3), 589–603,
  • Jöns, H and Deakin-Smith, H (2025) Mid-career outcomes of doctoral graduates from German universities explained through triadic thought Globalisation, Societies and Education 23 (3), 622-656, .
  • Jöns, H, Brigstocke, J, Couper, P, and Ferretti, F (2024) History and philosophy of geography: Looking back and looking forward Journal of Historical Geography 85, 1-8, .
  • Jöns, H, Brigstocke, J, Bruinsma, M, Couper, P, Ferretti, F, Ginn, F, Hayes, E, and van Meeteren, M (2024) Conversations in geography: Journeying through four decades of history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom Journal of Historical Geography 85, 40-54, .
  • Jöns, H (2024) Internationalization and uneven global geographies of knowledge production and exchange in geography, in How to Foster Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Geography, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, pp. 116-132,
  • Jöns, H (2022) The 'international' in geography: Concepts, actors, challenges, in A Geographical Century: Essays for the Centenary of the International Geographical Union, Cham: Springer, pp. 63-80, .
  • Jöns, H, Heffernan, M, Bond, DW (2022) Unity in bronze: German universities and the 250th anniversary of the Royal Society, Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 76(3), 407-443, .