Research Interests

PhD Projects MSc Theses MSc Topics Publications

Related groups and group leaders:

Landscape and Conservation Social Sciences (Annina Michel)Geographies of Socio-Ecologies and Just Transformations (Sierra Deutsch)Geographies of Young people and Education (Itta Bauer & Sara Landolt)

Our research is inspired by our commitment to transformative change towards just sustainable futures. Our work thus revolves around perceptions and governance of nature and landscapes, as well as political ecology. Focusing on hidden power dynamics, we engage various disciplines, stakeholders, and worldviews to find creative and (environmentally) just solutions to sustainability problems.

Current projects

Weiterführende Informationen

With this project we follow two goals: Firstly, we foster the collaboration between researchers of TSU and UZH who work in the field of sustainable development and nature conservation in mountain regions in Georgia and Switzerland. Secondly, we will create a modular course at both the Department of Human Geography at TSU and the Department of Geography at UZH.

More information
MTA mountainapp

SNS project members: Annina Michel, Norman Backhaus, Gvantsa Salukvadze

This empirical environmental ethics project explores the human/nature relationships of birdwatchers in order to better understand, define and categorise the components of their environmental values. We use a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to understand these relationships.

More information

SNS project members: Anna Deplazes Zemp, Rafael Zinnenlauf, Zélie Stauffer, Norman Backhaus

How can critical social sciences that identify structural knowledge/power dynamics be put into practice?

Translating Transformations

SNS project members: Sierra Deutsch, Norman Backhaus, Jinat Hossain, Mirjam Steiger

The Human Geography component of SPOTLIGHT examines historical and ongoing socio-technological changes in nocturnal public lighting in Switzerland, with a focus on the Zurich metropolitan area.

Link

SNS project members: Norman Backhaus, Nitin Bathla, Sophia Heller

An interdisciplinary research team examined plural values of nature for Switzerland and in Swiss parks.

More information

SNS project members: Roger Keller, Annina Michel, Norman Backhaus

How can we interweave Indigenous, practitioner, and academic knowledges to co-design practical transformative solutions that address the ‘polycrisis’? FIRI explores this question through a focus on re-visibilization, rather than reconnection of humans to each other and the rest of nature, thus rethinking human-nature relations and ‘human nature’.

Rethinking Human-Natures

SNS project members: Sierra Deutsch, Annina Michel, Roger Keller, Rose Nelson