With a total of fifteen professorships, research at GIUB covers the full spectrum of the discipline, with physical and human geography given equal weighting.
In the coming years, professors and researchers at our department will join forces to collaborate on new projects in five research focus areas, which address major global challenges facing human societies and the Earth system. These research focus areas straddle the boundary between physical and human geography and enable a dialog between geographers from all sub-disciplines.
The five new research focus areas are:
Water Futures
Global change leads to radical shifts in the water cycle and increasing anthropogenic pressure on water systems, which are key drivers of the research focus Water Futures. At its core are questions on
- how hydrological systems function,
- how we observe processes and change,
- which magnitudes are reached by extreme events, and
- how to build better models for predicting catchment function and change.
Our research aims at identifying and implementing solutions for a sustainable science-based management of water resources in terms of water quantity and quality.
Risk and Security
This research focus is concerned with holistic approaches to risk, interrelated facets of security and critical interrogations of the politics and geographies of (in)security and securitization. It explores
- the interplay of hazards, vulnerabilities and exposures in different geographical and socio-cultural contexts, as well as
- the uneven landscapes and experiences of (in)security that result from unequal global-local relations of power.
Research in this focus area aims at developing concepts and solution-orientated approaches of disaster risk reduction, water security, and human security.
Governing Transformations
This research focus addresses societal changes and social-ecological transformations, and their significance for sustainable development in a globalized world. At its core are questions of
- how economic, social and ecological transformations are, and can be, shaped and managed, e.g., with respect to energy and water systems, housing and financial markets,
- industrial and urban development, and
- climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Our research explores both radical and gradual approaches to transformation, ranging from technological advancements, economic incentives, state regulations and public policies, to civil society initiatives and shifts in geographical educational. Particular emphasis is placed on actors and institutions, and thus the governance constellations and mechanisms, in transformative processes.
Inequality and Justice
This research focus covers topics related to societies, settlements, institutions and policies through an exploration of inequitable power, wealth and entitlements using lenses of social, climate and gender justice and political ecology, feminist and critical theories.
The work looks at societies in the Global North and the Global South, critically examining
- social, economic and environmental dimensions that structure inequalities and injustices,
- solutions to address these,
- processes on different scales from community/local scales up to spaces of global policy making, for example on climate change and biodiversity,
- drivers of vulnerability to climate change and the politics of adaptation and maladaptation,
- water and energy access as a source of political conflict and cooperation,
- epistemic hierarchies in research and policymaking,
- precarity in housing,
- the legacy of colonialism in environment-development governance, identity and citizenship, as well as
- justice and (in)security and violence.
Land Surface Dynamics
This research focus on Land Surface Dynamics examines the characteristics of interactions between landforms, Earth surface processes, water systems, geological and biological cycles, land use, and climate. We study and model past, recent, and future land surface dynamics in changing spatiotemporal patterns and Earth system responses to climatic and land cover/use change forcing.
Examples of key research questions investigated across different spatial and temporal scales include
- how landscapes evolve over time under the changing climate,
- how water and sediment fluxes can be modelled in relation to management of water resources, and
- how climate change affects the main cycles of terrestrial ecosystems (i.e., carbon and water cycles, and energy balance).
These topics overlap with and complement one another in terms of their content. They cover a wide range of cross-disciplinary research questions that can only be tackled adequately through intra-, inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue. The networks to be established include scientists from the department and, furthermore, collaborations within the University of Bonn’s Transdisciplinary Research Areas as well as with other institutes and researchers at the University of Bonn, the geoscientific research community of the Geoverbund ABC/J, the geosciences network in the Aachen-Bonn-Cologne/Jülich research region, and with stakeholders in Germany and further afield.