Research
Geographical research in Bonn is mainly focused on the following five research focus areas: Water Futures, Risk and Security, Governing Transformations, Inequality and Justice and Land Surface Dynamics. Research and teaching within these key fields is divided into nine academic areas.
News on our Research
Litter in the Rhine River: Some 53,000 Items of Litter Flow Past Cologne Daily
The amount of litter floating in the Rhine is many times larger than previously believed. Researchers from the University of Bonn, the University of Tübingen and the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) partnered with the Cologne-based non-profit pollution-fighting organization K.R.A.K.E. to collect and classify macro litter in a floating litter trap—the only one of its kind in Germany—over a period of 16 months. Katharina Höreth from Prof. Dr. Mariele Evers' working group “Ecohydrology and Water Resources Management” at the Department of Geography is part of the project. Extrapolation models based on the observed volume indicate that roughly 53,000 items of macro waste debris float past Cologne on the Rhine river every day. Disposable plastic products make up a large proportion of the litter found in the Rhine. The findings have now been published in the scientific journal “Communications Sustainability.”
Melanie Stammler successfully defends her dissertation on kinematics of rock glaciers in the Dry Andes of Argentina
Melanie Stammler successfully defended her dissertation “Multi-Scale Rock Glacier Kinematics in the Dry Andes of Argentina: From DEMs to the State of Permafrost Using Photogrammetry”, supervised by Prof. Dr. Lothar Schrott. Congratulations!
Dr. Hohmann Award 2025 for Dr. Arne Rieber by the Cologne Geographical Society
On 4 December the board of the Society for Geography (GfE) in Cologne presented Dr Arne Rieber with the certificate for this year's Dr Hohmann Grant for his research project “German Industrial Transformation: Geoeconomy and the Role of the State in the Chemical Industry”. Congratulations!
Collaborative Research Center “Future Rural Africa” (CRC-TRR 228) Extended at GIUB
The Collaborative Research Center Transregio (TRR) 228 “Future Rural Africa” has secured four more years of funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is thus entering its third funding period. In this project, researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Cologne study how rural regions in Africa are changing and can be shaped in the future, working closely with local partners to explore key questions about socio-ecological transformations and future-making in rural Africa.