Future events
- 2026-05-21T13:30:00+02:00
- 2026-05-21T14:30:00+02:00
21
ThursdayZEF public lecture about Biofortified Seeds in Zimbabwe
Individuals do not always make decisions according to traditional economic rationality; instead, behavioral factors such as perceptions, information, and aspirations shape how they value and adopt new technologies. We present 3 examples of how these factors influence farmer acceptance and valuation of agricultural-nutrition interventions, specifically iron- and zinc-biofortified beans and vitamin A biofortified maize seeds in Zimbabwe. First, we examine how experimental quantity design affects farmers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for biofortified bean seeds. Second, we evaluate how nutrition information and farmer aspirations influence demand for biofortified bean seeds. Finally, we examine how different types and combinations of information—including labeling, vitamin A deficiency and its health impacts, the nutritional benefits of vitamin A-biofortified maize, and cooking-quality attributes such as taste and cooking time—influence farmers’ WTP for vitamin A biofortified maize seed.
- 2026-05-21T16:00:00+02:00
- 2026-05-21T17:00:00+02:00
21
ThursdayZEF/CSG Expert Talk: The implications of complexity
Expert Talk by Carlos Gershenson, an Empire Professor of Innovation at the School of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the New England Complex Systems Institute, a research professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Visiting Professor at MIT, Northeastern University, and ITMO University. He has (co-)written more than 200 scientific publications in books, journals, and conference proceedings, which have been cited more than 9000 times. He has a wide variety of academic interests, including artificial intelligence, complex systems, self-organization, artificial life, and philosophy of science, with applications to healthcare, transportation, governance, education, cybersecurity, and more. He is the serving President of the Complex Systems Society, Editor-in-Chief of Complexity Digest and member of the Board of Advisors for Scientific American.
- 2026-05-28T16:00:00+02:00
- 2026-05-28T17:00:00+02:00
28
ThursdayINTERFACES colloquium: sustainable land management in Africa
Multiple actors, multiple strategies: how to incentivize the uptake of sustainable land management practices by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
- 2026-06-10T11:00:00+02:00
- 2026-06-10T12:00:00+02:00
10
WednesdayZEF Colloquium: Becoming river
Water is at the center of the struggle for life. Modern civilization's dependence on capitalist formations has led to the destruction of ecosystems and water-bodies as sacred entities. Rivers and mudflats, as complex hybrid networks, reveal ways of living amid a planetary crisis and can offer creative socio-ecological care practices. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in Latin America and the Caribbean, Denisse Roca-Servat, proposes to think with water as a point of departure for envisioning alternatives to the extractive-capitalist model. Becoming river, therefore, implies considering geo-hydro-social diversity, its historical foundations, its multi-scalar assemblages, and ultimately, committing to build alternative hydrosocial relations, intersecting decolonial, feminist, and cosmopolitical justice approaches.
- 2026-06-11T13:30:00+02:00
- 2026-06-11T15:00:00+02:00
11
ThursdayThe Kara Ritual of the Konso
This talk is part of the Heritage Week of the Bonn. More info here: https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/research-and-teaching/research-profile/transdisciplinary-research-areas/tra5/heritage-week-2026