Chair Group of Sustainability Governance
We are an interdisciplinary group of scholars working at the nexus of sustainability, science, and society. In our research and teaching, we combine approaches from Political Science, Sociology, Critical Geography, and Science & Technology Studies.
Our research is theory-driven and empirically grounded, often based on case studies with a reach from local to transnational and global levels. We have conducted research in various European, Latin American and African contexts.
- In our work we, inter alia, focus on ...
- environmental conflicts in geopolitical contexts;
- dynamics of socio-technical transformations;
- environmental injustice and just sustainabilities;
- environmental knowledge politics;
- professional epistemologies and cultures of expertise;
- collective action – mobilization and resistance,
... in a broad spectrum of policy fields including biodiversity, climate change, energy, water, land-use, conservation, mining, and food.
In terms of scholarly strands, we build on various approaches including Political Ecology, Governmentality, Post-structuralist Policy Studies, Transition Studies, Science & Technology Studies (STS), Critical Peace and Conflict Studies, and Decolonial Theory.
Methodologically, our research largely draws on qualitative methods anchored in the critical interpretivist tradition of the social sciences and mixed methods. Inter- and transdisciplinarity are integral features of all our work as we seek to illuminate the possibilities and limits of these new principles of scientific problem-solving.
In our teaching, we emphasize principles of problem-based learning, intercultural competencies, and critical reflexivity based on perspective pluralism. With that, we strive to educate a new generation of reflexive sustainability governance practitioners and scholars.
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