Future-fit villages

International debates on climate change and environmental protection have triggered a renewed interest in rural communities, both in the global south and in the global north.

Concepts such as climate ‘vulnerability’ and ‘adaptability’ are the most recent manifestations of the international community’s endeavours to frame rural communities as target groups for comprehensive intervention. Besides economic relations, such policies pursue comprehensive social reforms and thus also target rural people’s norms, social values, and mentalities.

This research group assembles scholars researching rural change in the context of various forms of risk and crisis in the past and today. It asks what our disciplines can contribute to the evolving transition into a post-carbon world, planetary-ecological transformations, and altering rural-urban relations. The objective of this research group is to initiate more exchange and, ultimately, concrete research cooperation between faculties, particularly between the humanities/social sciences and natural sciences.