Stefanie Klose started working for the EPICUR European Universities Initiative as a Lecturer, EPICUR Project Manager and Course Coordinator in 2020.
Short Vita
Stefanie Klose’s teaching focuses on sustainability, systems thinking, system dynamics modelling, and Education for Sustainable Development, integrating project- and challenge-based learning approaches. At the University of Freiburg, she teaches the course Wicked Problems in Socio-Economic Systems. She previously co-taught Mediated Modeling for Sustainability with Andreas Zitek from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). She also taught The Sustainicum Collection, a project-based course on education for sustainable development with Julia Wlasak from BOKU, and Nachhaltigkeitstransformationen selbst gestalten!, a German-language course on sustainability, with Julia Buchebner from BOKU. Additionally, she is a principal organizer of EPICUR’s challenge-based EPIC Missions, which connect students with external stakeholders to tackle sustainability challenges.
Before her time at UCF, she taught a course on Research Methods in Industrial Ecology at the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources of the University of Freiburg.
She enjoys teaching in general, but particularly values the creativity that emerges from co-teaching. If you have ideas for interactive, interdisciplinary courses that would benefit from an international and diverse group of students, or if you are interested in co-teaching, feel free to reach out to her.
Stefanie Klose’s research focuses on sustainability transitions, resource efficiency, and socio-ecological systems, with an emphasis on a systems perspective of material flows. Her doctoral research at the University of Freiburg assessed the potential of resource efficiency strategies in the copper cycle, supervised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Pauliuk. She has participated in international research initiatives, such as the Young Scientists Summer Program at IIASA and a research exchange between Monash University and Freiburg. More recently, she has been involved in the EPICluster project, investigating multidimensional barriers and potentials for a sustainable and just renewable energy transition in Europe. Her latest research project, REGENERATE, brings together seven early-career researchers from EPICUR universities to explore how the EU can balance fossil fuel phase-out, regionalized supply chains, and ecosystem restoration. The project examines regional disparities in population density, income, and environmental standards, addressing potential social resistance and environmental justice concerns in the energy transition through a system dynamics modelling approach.