CLIMATE AND EARTH
SYSTEM SCIENCES
Photo: UHH/Denstorf
8 April 2022
Photo: Nina Stork
We are proud to announce the successful disputation of our SICSS member Katharina Heider
Her dissertation “Between Tradition and Modernization: Multifunctional Smallholder Agriculture and Sustainable Rural Development in the Mediterranean Region” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Scheffran and Dr. Juan Miguel Rodriguez Lopez.
Katharina's dissertations addresses the urgent need for a social-ecological transformation of the agricultural sector. If managed sustainably, especially smallholder agriculture can provide a plethora of different functions for society, the environment and the economy. Her research goal was to identify leverage points to enhance the multifunctionality of agriculture. In her thesis, she applied a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative GIS-based analysis with qualitative expert and online surveys. One of the many findings of her work is that the renovation of traditional water wheels (norias) and the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices constitute examples for local solutions to address global challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss.
Katharina was a member of the Institute of Geography at the Universität Hamburg.
Katharina’s future plans?
Katharina plans to continue working on sustainability and the multifunctionality of agriculture, either inside or outside of academia.