On September 14th, THESys Doctoral Researcher Fabian Stenzel successfully defended his dissertation on the implications of large-scale irrigated bioenergy plantations for future water use and water stress. Fabian will continue his work at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in a PostDoc project on global systemic risks arising from degradation of the biosphere…
In an audio tour, THESys researcher Timothy Moss guides listeners through Berlin’s infrastructure from the creation of Greater Berlin to the present day. The tour is now available on the berlinHistory app and is spoken by the historian himself. The audio tour leads along the pre-1920 border of Berlin and Charlottenburg demonstrating how the city…
Students of the Humboldt-Scholarship spent a whole year investigating academic travel at Humboldt-University zu Berlin. The results of their research have just been published in a THESys Discussion Paper. How to travel more sustainably? In their research, the students of the Humboldt-Scholarship ‘Sustainability and Global Justice’ 2020/21 analyzed academic travel as substantial source of CO2-emissions at…
Based on her PhD on artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Tanzania, IRI THESys researcher Anna Frohn Pedersen has directed the 60-second film ‘Gold’, which is currently being screened in the metro stations of Seoul (South Korea). Watching the search for gold The experimental film was made in 2018 in the Geita Region of Tanzania,…
How does a gold mine become an exemplary case of ‘cooperation’? THESys researchers Beril Ocaklı and Tobias Krüger, together with co-authors Marco Janssen and Ulan Kasymov, pursue this question in their new article published in Ecological Economics. Taking the discourse seriously: Rational self-interest and resistance to mining in Kyrgyzstan Focusing on Kyrgyzstan’s third largest gold deposit…
Seven IRI THESys Members have been successful in winning the bid for the Einstein Research Unit “Climate and Water under Change” together with a 28 PI consortium including Freie Universität Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin and Charité. With the funding from the Berlin University Alliance through the Einstein Foundation, the research team will set up an…
Following his election by the Academic Council in April this year, THESys Member Prof. Christoph Schneider took up his duties as Humboldt-Universität’s new Vice President for Research on August 2, 2021. “At the moment, we are getting to know each other as a team and ‘grooving’ with each other in the various work processes. I’m…
With an opening ceremony, the Humboldt Forum opened its doors to the public on July 20, 2021. One of six inaugural exhibitions is the show of the Humboldt Labor “After Nature”, to which also a number of THESys researchers have contributed. The exhibition “After Nature” addresses the interactions between climate change and biodiversity loss, as…
At the THESys Summer School ‘Transformative Human-Environment Research & Participatory Methods’ in September 2019, doctoral researchers, faculty, as well as a handful of members of the public gathered in a final ‘fishbowl’ discussion to discuss the preceding week’s lectures, discussions, and practicums on the democratization of knowledge production. This Discussion Paper ‘How activist should scientists…
Our interdisciplinary dialogue occurred online on Friday, 11 June, organised by our decolonial research group. We explored how coloniality influences knowledge production within academia and what alternatives exist to break the dynamics of reproducing social injustice within our research practices. Two key experts, Dr Noa K. Ha and Dr Antony Pattathu, highlighted examples of their…
