Around 60 visitors attended the "Water Lecture" held at ZEF on Wednesday, November 21. Waltina Scheumann and Michael Brüntrup (DIE) and Franziska Hollmann (DEG) presented aspects of research and work related to "water grabbing".

The competence network 'Crossroads Asia' convened an international conference on 'Figurations of Mobility' in Berlin on November 22-24. Conrad Schetter, acting director of ZEF, chaired the kick-off panel on figurational analysis within the context of area studies.

This workshop at ZEF continued the research efforts on urban climate change adaptation within the International Consortium for Comparative Water and Development Studies (ICCWaDS), in which ZEF has been collaborating with SOAS in London and the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, since 2011.

An international workshop on “Food price volatility and food security” co-organized by ZEF and IFPRI took place at ZEF in Bonn January 31 - February 1, 2013. Leading international experts and junior researchers shared and discussed their findings on the much debated volatility and speculation issues in food markets. Volatility matters especially for the poor. For the workshop summary and links to presentations and short videos see

ZEF will participate at the Informatik 2013 conference in Koblenz, Germany, September 16-20, 2013. ZEF's focus is on the "Potential uses of mobile telephony and mobile Internet in the agricultural sector in industrial and developing countries".

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Craig L. Katz (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City)

Speakers: Dr. Claudia Breitung, Technical Advisor/Senior Researcher, BICC, Milena Berks, Researcher / Project Officer, BICC and Dr. Boubacar Haidara, Senior Researcher, BICC.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Ana Meijide (University of Bonn)

Speaker: Valentine Opanga, ZEF CPC Junior Researcher

Speakers: Tereza Kaplan, Sebastian Schuster and Arno Bratz (Welthungerhilfe)