Caroline Meier is a research Fellow and PhD candidate at the Biosphere Reserves Institute at the University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde, Germany. I study cultural dimensions of human-‘nature’ relations. Of particular interest are power relations within environmental initiatives, how they emerged and how they work. In my PhD project, I investigate how international organisations allowed and still allow for local knowledge to be heard and promoted beyond the local scale by the use of the example of the UNESCO ‘Man and the Biosphere’ programme. The PhD project takes a historical perspective and is localised in the critical thought school and within this, political ecology.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Central America

Paula Deppenbrock is a student assistant in the research group Social Geography of Coastal and Marine Areas at the Institute of Geography at Kiel University. She is also part of the coordination team of the EnJust network. Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Geography, her interests in in the connections between marine research, chlimate change and envionmental justice stems from her background in water sports.

Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. As a social geographer, he worked on social inclusion and exclusion, urban studies, praxelogical theories, the methodology of the social sciences and geographical health research. He developed the research programme of a transactional anthropology, which expresses a specific understanding of critique as mediation. It is particularly suited to analyze local power asymmetries and dissent scenarios. Recent work has focused on cities in transition, post-growth economies and environmental justice. Numerous collaborative research projects with city administrations, urban target groups also by involving students.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Cities

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Maximilian Benner is an economist and economic geographer with a habilitation degree (venia docendi) in human geography. As senior scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Vienna and non-tenured associate professor (“Privatdozent”) at the University of Klagenfurt, he focuses on innovation-based regional development and its impacts in terms of environmental sustainability, social justice, and inclusiveness. Empirically, he is particularly interested in regions hosting emission-intensive industries such as the chemical industry.

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Elena Zepharovich is a researcher at the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern. She finished her PhD at University of Bern at the Institute of Geography. Before joining the CDE, she was working at Vienna University of Economics (WU) in the Department of Ecological Economics in the field of Education for Sustainable Development. Her current research focus lies on inequality, environmental justice, and deforestation in the Argentinean Chaco.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Argentinia

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{:en}{:en}Anika Schmidt is a scientist working on urban transformations towards sustainability at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig, Department Urban and Environmental Sociology. Her research includes e.g. urban governance, (cooperative) processes of green space development and the socio-spatial implications of housing market dynamics. She is involved in transdisciplinary research projects, contributing to combine the knowledge and competences of scientific, municipal and non-governmental practice partners and to finding new forms of collaboration. Her scientific interests especially lie in the conflicts, paradoxes and issue of social-ecological justice of urban transformations, e.g. the goal conflicts arising through environmental or “green” gentrification, cooperative urban development and participatory processes.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: urban areas, so far mostly within Europe

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