Since 2015, the IRI THESys has been awarding prizes for excellent Bachelor and Master theses in the field of human-environmental research. Now, all bachelor and master graduates of HU Berlin are again invited to apply for our THESys Award! Applications can be submitted during the application period from 15 September to 15 November 2023. Who…
Photo credits: Cristián Flores Fernández successfully defended his PhD thesis, Lithium, Green Hydrogen and the contested dynamics of green frontiers-making in Chile. Cristián’s dissertation examines how Chile’s role as a strategic supplier of lithium and renewable energy for global decarbonization reshapes its territories and political economy. It analyzes how multi-scalar coalitions deploy legal, narrative, and…
Photo credits: Zuneera Shah 2026 Mehwish Zuberi successfully defended her PhD thesis, Navigating Agricultural Transformation Pathways: Dynamics, Possibilities, and Aspirations of Smallholder Farmers in South Punjab, Pakistan. Mehwish‘s dissertation examines agricultural transformation in South Punjab, Pakistan, focusing on smallholder farmers’ lived experiences within productivity-driven policy contexts. She investigates how policies promoting genetically modified and hybrid…
Photo credits: Cordula Kropp Marie Pratzer successfully defended her PhD thesis, Conservation in contested landscapes: considering land-use complexity in tropical dry woodlands. Her PhD examined how simplified perspectives on land and land use overlook real-world complexity, especially in contested regions like the South American dry woodlands. It aims to improve conservation planning by integrating power…
Back to the (1.5°C) Future: The Potential and Challenges of Carbon Removal The lecture will be delivered in German (Title: Zurück in die (1,5 °C) Zukunft: Potentiale und Herausforderungen von CO₂-Entnahmen) 02.06.2026, 18.00-19.30 HU Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Senatssaal In 2024, a temperature rise of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels was recorded for the…
The State in the Anthropocene: The Comparative Politics of Climate Institutions and Climate Policies 26.05.2026, 18.00-19.30 HU Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Senatssaal Despite the scientific evidence accumulated on the human origins of climate change, and the Paris agreement signed in December 2015 by 196 countries, global public policy addressing climate change seems to fall…
Photo credits: Wiebke Hampel The Grand Challenges Conference of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), chaired by Prof. Dr. Petra Knaus (FU Berlin), addressed pressing contemporary societal challenges. Several researchers from IRI THESys joined the conference with various contributions. Tobias Krüger was the discussant of Margreet Zwarteveen’s keynote talk who championed the notion of care for…
Photo credits: Wiebke Hampel Paz Araya successfully defended her PhD thesis, Warmth Care in Cold Houses: Negotiations with the Indoor Thermal Environment in Southern Chile. This thesis explores how people in intermediate cities of southern Chile negotiate cold domestic environments through what I call warmth care — the active, ongoing practices through which thermal well-being…
Haoying Li successfully defended her PhD thesis, Producing Rural Space in southwest China Entrepreneurship, Smallholders and Governance in the Transformation of Mianyang, Sichuan. This PhD thesis examines how rural space is produced in non-frontier regions of China, using Mianyang in Sichuan as a case study. It combines spatial analysis, qualitative fieldwork, and mixed methods to…
40 hours/month; duration 24 months; application deadline: 31st March 2026
Early online version of a new paper in npj Urban Sustainability, which explores how co-creating Edible Cities can either accelerate- or block- urban sustainability transitions.
