Currently, Cornelia Tippel is conducting semi-structured interviews with home-based self-employed people in the Kreuzviertel in Dortmund, Germany. The interviews examine the motivations for home-based self-employment and how people use and shape their home-working spaces, as well as their everyday (work) practices. The interview participants are also invited to take pictures of their home-working spaces and share them with the researchers.

In the course of the interviews, Cornelia has spoken to people from a broad range of different professions, including scene builders, therapists, masseuses, IT consultants, artists, office services or founders of digital enterprises. Accordingly, their home-working spaces are very heterogeneous. Some of them work just with a notebook in different places of their home while others have a fully equipped separate room for working.

The interviews have been conducted to analyse social and economic motivations for home-based self-employment, neighbourhood relations and residential choices of these people and transitions of the home-working spaces in relation to work and life. As part of the broader WORKANDHOME project, similar interviews will be conducted in cities in the UK.