Alica Repenning, Dr

Dr. Alica Repenning is an economic geographer specializing in the geographies of digital transformations. Her research focuses on the spatial and temporal dynamics through which digital transformation is negotiated, as well as the barriers that impede sustainable transitions. She is particularly interested in understanding who shapes digital futures, where these futures are produced, and what implications these processes have for regions, cities, and international relations and dependencies.

At the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Dr. Repenning is a Senior Researcher in the research focus “Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Society”. She leads the newly established “Forum: Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Society”, the engagement unit of the research focus. The Forum investigates the interplay between entrepreneurship, digital transformation, and societal change. To this end, it develops innovative formats for participatory knowledge production, including Research Sprints and Clinics, with the aim of generating evidence-based recommendations for action, particularly at the interface of business, public policy, and public administration.

Academic Career

In 2025, Alica was appointed as a Young Academy Fellow of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg. She is also an active member of two German Research Foundation (DFG) research networks: “Temporality of Disruptive Innovation” and “Geographies of Economic Ideation and Spatial Transformation”.

Alica Repenning completed her doctorate in Applied Economic Geography at Humboldt University of Berlin. She worked as a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS), where she contributed to a range of research projects. She later held a postdoctoral position at the University of Greifswald, combining research and teaching. 

She obtained her Master’s degree from the University of Copenhagen in the programme “Geography and Geoinformatics: Transformation of Cities and Landscapes”. Prior to this, she studied Geography (B.Sc.) at Heidelberg University and completed an Erasmus+ exchange at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom.