Stefanie Lindner has been a research assistant at the Centre for Structural Change and Regional Development (ZeStuR), Cluster 5 – ‘Conflicts over Democracy and Migration’ – since May 2026. As part of the sub-project ‘Options for Action for a Democratic Everyday Culture in Communities (HiG)’, she is investigating how to respond to current attempts by the far right to gain dominance. 

She has worked as a remedial therapist and social worker in areas including low-threshold and non-judgemental addiction support services. During her Bachelor’s degree in Social Work at Nuremberg Tech and her Master’s degree in Social Work as a Human Rights Profession (Berlin), she explored power-critical perspectives on social work, non-judgemental approaches to social work, and right-wing extremism. Her research focuses on critical research into right-wing extremism, youth work, eastern Germany and a reflexive perspective on dominant culture.

As part of her ongoing PhD research, provisionally titled ‘Youth work’s response to far-right violence in the 1990s’, she was already working from 2019 to 2024 within the Research Training Group ‘Professionalisation of Health and Social Care Professions in the Context of Societal Transformation Processes’ at the BTU.