Laura Imhoff
Laura Imhoff is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Anglophone Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She studied Sociology and German Studies at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf and received her M.A. degree with a thesis on “Urban semantics: a linguistic study on the constitution of meaning in public space exemplified by selected street art in Düsseldorf”. In her research, Laura is committed to investigating communication practices in public space, climate change discourses and the semiotics of (un)sustainable place-making. In her doctoral project, tentatively titled “Communication strategies in public space: The semiotics of environmental activist stickers”, she looks at stickers as a distinctive genre deployed in the constitution of the environmental activism discourse.
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Living in a Concrete Jungle: The Social Semiotics of Urban Greenery
Invited Talk by Laura Imhoff
1 December 2025, Bern
As examples of the production of public "green narratives" (Kosatica, 2023), the aestheticization of urban spaces as part of ‘nature’ are increasingly prevalent. In this presentation, I examine contemporary realisations of urban flora and their potential effects on producing apparently sustainable spaces. Addressing the semiotic dimension of urban planting, I organize my analysis around three ways flora are typically realized in urban space: (1) images of flora, (2) plastic plants, and (3) organic greenery. Ultimately, this study considers the extent to which these flora-associated emplacements frame and visualize sustainablility by mimicking nature in idealised and often aestheticized ways.