© Bielefeld University
Rectorate Representatives for the Participatory Process Sustainability Mission Statement
Prof. Dr. Eleonora Rohland
Rectorate Representative for Sustainability in the Field of Research
Eleonora Rohland is Professor of the Intertwined History of the Americas in the Pre-Modern Period at Bielefeld University and a member of the Center for InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science (I2SoS). Her research links environmental and climate history with inter-American entanglement history. She is sub-project leader in the Bielefeld SFB 1288 "Practices of Comparison: Ordering and Changing the World", co-coordinator of the research team, research unit, research group "Coping with Environmental Crises" at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) in Bielefeld/ Guadalajara (Mexico) and member of the ZiF cooperation group "Volcanoes, Climate and History". Together with colleagues from physics and biology, she founded the interdisciplinary lecture series "Lectures For Future - Humans in a Limited Environment" at Bielefeld University and in cooperation with the VHS Bielefeld in 2019. Since the beginning of her own studies in the early 2000s, Rohland has been concerned with questions of how society deals with extreme climatic events (sustainability in the broader sense) in a historical perspective. She is intensely interested in how these research questions, which often connect the natural sciences and the humanities, can be "normalized" in the research funding landscape and in exploring the research potential on sustainability at Bielefeld University, bringing it into conversation across different Faculties and thus also bundling it both in terms of content and strategy.
PD Dr. Lore Knapp & Dr. rer. nat. Thomas Hermann
Rectorate Representatives for Sustainability in the Area of Studies & Teaching
PD Dr. Lore Knapp
PD Dr. Lore Knapp is a temporary academic councilor in the subject of literary studies. Together with Dr. Thomas Hermann, she is committed to teaching sustainability issues. Her goal is to ensure that teaching staff, instructors and lectures in all subjects teach climate-friendly and equitable development and that the Faculties of Bielefeld University exploit the points of contact offered by their respective disciplines through innovations that can be implemented quickly.
Dr. rer. nat. Thomas Hermann
"As head of the Ambient Intelligence WG, I have been looking for ways to create awareness of energy consumption through ambient interfaces, esp. through sonification, for quite some time. As coordinator of the Computer Science program at the Faculty of Technology, it is important to me that students receive a future-oriented and critically reflective education that qualifies them to assess the consequences of technology in a complex world and to act responsibly. As a co-founder of the Scientists for Future regional group in Bielefeld, it is important to me that we understand the climate crisis as an unprecedented human crisis that we must work together to address and focus on the whole. The fact that this has not already been happening for decades points to deficits in understanding, accepting or translating it into appropriate action. That is why anchoring sustainability in the field of study and teaching is particularly important to me: we need a culture of thinking, reflection, and responsibility that empowers people to find and implement solutions as multi-solving (cf. Elizabeth Sawin) for the many interconnected problems. I will contribute to this with passion and energy. Because today's students are tomorrow's leaders, teachers, and stakeholders."
Prof. Dr. Dominik Schwarz
Rectorate Representative for Sustainability in Operations
Dominik Schwarz is a cosmologist and deals with the origin and development of the universe. In the cosmological context, it quickly becomes clear that life is only possible under special conditions in the universe and that humanity is therefore well advised not to destroy them for itself. He has been researching and teaching at the Faculty of Physics since 2004. He represents the German Long Wavelength Consortium on the board of the International LOFAR Telescope, the world's largest radio interferometer, and is therefore familiar with both university operations and the operation of large-scale research facilities. He is concerned with the question of how to organize research, teaching and administration in a climate-neutral and sustainable way, and hopes to be able to contribute to answering this question as Rectorate Representative for Sustainability in Operations.