Global Sustainability, Cultural Perspectives and Challenges for Transdisciplinary Integrated Research

Prof. Dr. Benno Werlen holds the Chair of Social Geography in the Institute of Geography, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. He studied geography, cultural anthropology, sociology and economics at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) where he received his PhD in 1985 (published in English as ‘Society, Action and Space’, Routledge 1993) from the faculty of philosophy; the habilitation on “Sozialgeographie alltäglicher Regionalisierungen” (Social Geography of Everyday Regionalizations, 2 volumes) was accomplished at the faculty of natural sciences at the University of Zurich. He was a guest researcher at the University of Cambridge/UK, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the London School of Economics; was a visiting professor at the universities of Salzburg, Geneva and Nijmegen and is a Panel Member of the ‘European Research Council/Brussels (Environment & Society)’. Since 2004 he holds the chair of the IGU Commission „Cultural Approach in Geography“ and is the initiator and executive director of the IGU initiative for the UN International Year of Global Understanding 2016. Since 2012 he is listed as a key thinker of space and place’ (Sage 2012). His research interests include the relationship between society and environment, the geographies of globalization and everyday regionalizations and the methodology of integrative research.