University professor

Thomas Gegenhuber becomes new SPÖ city councillor in Linz

Executive Deputy Mayor Dietmar Prammer (left) with local councillor Thomas Gegenhuber.

(Bild: MecGreenie)

Just in time for the mayoral election on January 12, the vacant city councillor position, to which the SPÖ is entitled due to the municipal council election results, has been filled: Managing Deputy Mayor Dietmar Prammer has appointed 41-year-old Thomas Gegenhuber to the SPÖ government team as a city councillor.

"With his expertise in sustainable and digital transformation, Thomas Gegenhuber is an enormous asset not only for the SPÖ team, but for city politics as a whole," emphasizes SPÖ mayoral candidate Prammer. "His work to date has always pursued the goal of developing sustainable and innovative solutions for social challenges. I am extremely pleased that Thomas Gegenhuber is available for the city council position and that we can continue to pursue this goal side by side in the future," Prammer continued.

On the municipal council since 2021
Thomas Gegenhuber, who has also been a member of the Linz City Council since 2021, currently heads the Linz Institute for Transformative Change (LIFT_C) and has been a professor of business administration for "Managing Socio-Technical Transitions" at the Johannes Kepler University Linz since 2021. Gegenhuber's work has been dedicated to open innovation processes, start-ups and digital transformation, among other things. In recent years, he has devoted himself to the topic of social innovation in order to research how social challenges can be overcome more sustainably.

Business and innovation departments
"New forms of cooperation are needed to solve difficult problems. This is why the exchange and building of bridges between science, business, civil society and the public sector has been a particular concern of mine in my work to date. I look forward to driving this forward in future from the perspective of urban policy and contributing my experience," said the future SPÖ city councillor, who is due to take over the Economy and Innovation portfolio at the municipal council meeting on February 6, 2025.

100 percent approval
The SPÖ municipal council group confirmed the proposal at yesterday's meeting with 100 percent of the votes. "The extraordinarily high level of approval in the SPÖ parliamentary group is a strong sign. We are aware that creating the best framework conditions for the transformation of the industry is the key to the booming economic engine in the city and province," concluded Dietmar Prammer and Thomas Gegenhuber.