Heiner Schanz conducts research from an interdisciplinary perspective on the governance of natural resources and the sustainability management of public and private organizations. His current research interests focus on the conditions and drivers of structural innovation processes for the sustainable development of complex economic systems, such as municipalities, regions, economic sectors and value chains. In addition, he has long been involved in university governance, including as former vice-rector, dean and founder of the MSc-Programms Environmental Governance and the University College Freiburg.
Marzena is an assistant professor at the Chair of Environmental Governance at the University of Freiburg. Her research examines environmental indicators as instruments of coordination and governance, with a particular focus on indicator architectures, impact models, and assessment approaches. She is especially interested in how complex environmental impacts can be translated into actionable knowledge for governance and decision-making. In this context, her work investigates how environmental information is generated, assessed, and interpreted, and how it is integrated by different actors — such as companies, regions, municipalities, and sectors — into decision-making processes.
Steffi studied Geography (Urban Studies) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, as well as Political Science, Legal Science and History at TU Dresden. Her research interests focus on the nexus between circular economy and green infrastructure, with a particular emphasis on the operationalisation of ecosystem services and their role in markets. As part of the “Forest Ecosystem Service Markets” sub-project within the “Future Forests” Cluster of Excellence at the University of Freiburg, she examines the structure and dynamics of real and political markets for the provision of forest ecosystem services. She analyses the market network architecture and dynamics as a basis for a comprehensive System Dynamics model.
Mateo is a research associate at the Chair of Environmental Governance within the Future Forests Cluster of Excellence at the University of Freiburg. He brings a strongly interdisciplinary background in physics (Technical University of Munich) and environmental governance (University of Freiburg). His main interests lie in the analysis of complex socio-ecological-technical systems, transformation processes and futures studies. Within the Future Forests Cluster, he conducts trend analysis of social, economic and technical developments and their implications for potential forests of the future, with a particular focus on the Black Forest and Rhine Valley regions.
Elena studied Environmental Sciences and Liberal Arts and Sciences at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, as well as Political Sciences at Sciences-Po Grenoble. She is interested in the role of markets and their influence on human-environment interactions. She analyzes markets as social networks, taking into account the relationships between market actors with a focus on spatial developments. She conducts research on the governance of cascading use at the level of entrepreneurial action.
Prof. Dr. Heiko Roehl
Honorary Professor Organizational Development & Change Management
