Prof. Dr. Tina Turnheim (born 1984) has held the deputy professorship of Social Work with a focus on aesthetic and political education in the Department of Social and Health Care since the winter semester 2025/2026. She has held this professorship since the end of April 2026. With a doctorate in theater studies and theater maker, she is also co-director of the Social Innovation Lab (SoIL) in Ludwigshafen's city center together with Prof. Dr. Andrea Lutz-Kluge. Here, Tina Turnheim briefly introduces herself:
You have been a deputy professor for Aesthetic and Political Education in Social Work at the HWG LU since September 1, 2025. Have you had a good start?
Yes, definitely! From day one, I felt extremely welcome at the HWG from all sides (from the faculty and staff of the Department, to the administration and university management, to the IT and canteen staff).
I would like to thank my students for their openness and willingness to experiment in aesthetic practice - I am looking forward to developing the first aesthetic interventions with them this semester, which will expand our ways of perception and invite us to critically question social processes.
What tasks does your new position involve?
My tasks include education and research, particularly in the field of aesthetic and political education in social work, as well as participation in academic self-administration.
Together with my highly esteemed colleague Prof. Dr. Andrea Lutz-Kluge, I have also taken over the co-direction of the Social Innovation Lab (SoIL), an HWG project space in a former store in Ludwigshafen's city center. Our aim is to further establish SoIL as a "third place", as a meeting space for a wide variety of actors in urban society and to give space to social negotiation processes at the interface of science and (socio)culture.
What particularly appeals to you about the new position?
Especially in the current time of upheaval, in which authoritarianism, a further strengthening of right-wing actors and cuts in the social and cultural sectors coincide, political and aesthetic education are central: in order to critically question these unsettling developments, not to naturalize them, but to recognize them as man-made and thus changeable, not to be paralyzed by them and to train political imagination.
The SoIL also offers the opportunity to have an impact on urban society and provide a stage for socio-political issues, social initiatives and critical aesthetic research.
What do you see as a particular challenge?
I come from a university background in the humanities and cultural studies and have worked as a freelance artist for over a decade, mainly in Berlin. At the HWG, I now meet students whose focus is different. I find it both enriching and challenging to be encouraged by this new constellation to constantly review my own assumptions and ideas, to further develop myself theoretically and didactically and to get to know the perspectives and experiences of the students and colleagues and to negotiate with them what potential aesthetic education could have in social work.
And with regard to the SoIL, I am currently focusing on getting to know local stakeholders and establishing new cooperation partnerships with cultural institutions from the Rhine-Neckar region. Through this exchange, I am learning a lot about the specific situation here locally and what moves people in the region.
What did you do professionally before taking up your post in Ludwigshafen?
Immediately before my appointment, I worked for a civil society organization in the field of political and cultural education critical of anti-Semitism for several years. In this context, I edited and wrote publications, contributed to a study and conceived and organized cultural events and projects. Before and during this time, I have been working as a freelance theater maker since 2011 in the areas of dramaturgy, text and direction, among others. From 2012-2021, mainly with the collective EGfKA, which I co-founded. All my artistic projects are linked by an examination of the social question and the attempt to shape my own production processes as equally as possible in awareness of their contradictions and hierarchies.
From 2019-2021, I was part of an artistic research group at the Kunsthochschule Kassel that dealt with Nazi continuities at documenta and conducted critical artistic research on Joseph Beuys in this context.
Why did you choose the HWG LU?
There were several reasons for this: the importance of aesthetic practice in the curriculum, the focus on critical social work in the faculty and the critical-reflexive perspective that is so urgently needed right now! Plus the potential that the Social Innovation Lab brings with it...
Above all, however, I was convinced by the fact that the denomination of the professorship explicitly combines aesthetic and political education.
Ultimately, the pleasant, collegial and interested atmosphere that I experienced during my trial lecture and the subsequent expert discussion were the final deciding factors in my decision to take up the position.
Thank you very much!
(Interview: PE/Hoko)
