On 7 January 2026, the long-standing and proven cooperation between the GeoHealth Centre of the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health (University Hospital Bonn) and the Institute of Geography was placed on a long-term basis with a cooperation agreement. This strengthens Bonn's position as an important location for geographical health research within Germany and ensures its visibility. With PD Dr Timo Falkenberg (GeoHealth Centre, GHC) and Apl. Prof. Dr Carsten Butsch (Institute of Geography, GIUB), two of the three spokespersons for the working group ‘Medical Geography and Geographical Health Research’ are based at the University of Bonn. The cooperation agreement was signed by Prof. Dr. Kathrin Hörschelmann (Managing Director at GIUB), Prof. Dr. Nico Mutters (Director of the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health) as well as Timo Falkenberg and Carsten Butsch.
It was agreed to continue the close cooperation in the areas of research and teaching, which has been personified to date primarily by Prof. Dr. Thomas Kistemann, former head of the GHC and former spokesperson for the ‘Medical Geography’ working group, due to his dual affiliation with the Medical and Mathematical-Natural Sciences Faculties at the University of Bonn. Thomas Kistemann has offered numerous courses at the GIUB over the past decades and supervised a large number of theses. Together with Carsten Butsch and Jürgen Schweikart, he is the author of the textbook ‘Medical Geography’.
With Timo Falkenberg taking over as head of the GHC, it became necessary to reorganise the institutional framework for cooperation, as Timo Falkenberg currently has no affiliation with the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. He has been a lecturer at the GIUB since 2016 and regularly supervises theses in the field of geographical health research. Together with Carsten Butsch, he has led the ‘Urban Health’ working group at the Global Health Hub Germany in addition to heading the Medical Geography and Geographical Health Research working group. This topic area – urban health – represents a central joint field of research, as does work on health in the Global South.