Campus Prize of the University of Bremen for sustainability research goes to ZEF Alumna

Daniel Ortiz, Dr. Sonia Bejarano, Philipp Kenkel, Dr. Anna Schwachula and Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge. <a href="https://www.leibniz-zmt.de">Photos: Jan Meyer / ZMT </a>

ZEF Alumna Anna Schwachula won the Campus Prize of the University of Bremen for sustainability research with her dissertation on German science policy for research cooperation with developing countries and emerging economies in sustainability research.

Based on qualitative empirical data, Anna Schwachula examines the orientation of the funding policy of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) towards sustainability goals, the basis for decision-making, the people involved and the effects of policy. New knowledge, created in international cooperation, is essential for global sustainability, she explains. Based on interviews with policy makers and researchers, her dissertation scrutinizes the actors, processes and contents of science policy in Germany. She argues that science policy mainly aims at German economic benefits and technology development. This, however, negatively influences global sustainability. To counter existing path dependencies, she provides recommendations for sustainability-oriented scientific practice and science policy.

Anna Schwachula became a doctoral candidate at the Center for Development Research in Bonn, went to Peru and Brazil and then worked for the Office of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). She has completed her dissertation on Dr. rer. pol. at the University of Bremen, where she was supervised by Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge from the Social Sciences at the University of Bremen, who was also Head of Department at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT). Today, she works as a research assistant at the German Development Institute (Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik), focusing on "International and Transnational Cooperation with the Global South".