After studying sociology, psychology and pedagogy at the University of Heidelberg, Matthias Burgbacher co-founded the creative agency PLAN:KOOPERATIV, which carries out citizen participation processes in urban development projects and was honored by the Federal Ministry of Economics as Kultur- und Kreativpiloten Deutschland in its founding year. Since 2013, he is working as a research assistant at the department of urbanism at KIT in Karlsruhe and was nominated as a Fellow of the Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes in 2017.