Verena Winiwarter

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Verena Winiwarter (born July 26, 1961 in Vienna ) is an Austrian environmental historian and university professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna . Winiwarter is Austria's " Scientist of the Year 2013".

Life

After graduating from high school in 1979, Verena Winiwarter graduated from the College for Technical Chemistry in Vienna with distinction in 1981 . She then worked as a technician at the Institute for Analytical Chemistry in the Department of Environmental Analysis at the Technical University of Vienna . In 1986 she began studying journalism and communication sciences and history at the University of Vienna . She wrote her master's thesis on the reception of ancient agricultural literature in the early Middle Ages. She developed her first interdisciplinary projects on Austrian environmental history in the 1990s as part of the “Sustainable Development of Austrian Cultural Landscapes” program of the Federal Ministry of Science and Research . From 1993 Winiwarter participated in numerous research projects at the Inter -University Institute for Interdisciplinary Research (IFF), which later became the Faculty for Interdisciplinary Research and Advanced Training at the Alpen-Adria University of Klagenfurt . On the basis of the research program cultural landscape research, Winiwarter and three colleagues submitted the first interdisciplinary dissertation in this field to the University of Vienna and received a doctorate in 1998 (title of the doctoral thesis: "Historical and ecological processes in a cultural landscape. Environmental history as an interdisciplinary science"). With her habilitation thesis (title: "Historical Studies in Human Ecology") at the Institute for Anthropology of the University of Vienna, Winiwarter received the Venia Legendi in 2003 in the nominal subject "Human Ecology".

In March 2007, Winiwarter was appointed to the University of Klagenfurt and held the only professorship for environmental history in Austria at its Institute for Social Ecology (Vienna location) . From January 2010 to December 2015 she was dean of the faculty for interdisciplinary research and advanced training at the University of Klagenfurt (locations in Klagenfurt, Vienna, Graz). On March 1, 2018, the Institute for Social Ecology was transferred to the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences.

Verena Winiwarter is married and has two children.

Research activity and work

Winiwarter's work focuses on the environmental history of agricultural societies and the environmental history of Austria as well as the scientific theory of inter- and transdisciplinary research.

Since 2007, she has been building up the research focus on the environmental history of the Danube and accelerating the expansion of the scientific basis of an environmental history of Austria. She has already led several FWF projects, in 2014 the URBWATER and ALPINE SKIERS projects. In addition to her scientific work, she also brought the topic of environmental history closer to a wider audience in several exhibitions and established environmental history in school lessons.

Winiwarter's team has been building a literature database on Austrian environmental history since 2007, which is available to the Austrian and international public.

Winiwarter has been a member of the commission for interdisciplinary ecological studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) since October 2006 . She has been a corresponding member since 2010 and a full member of the OeAW's philosophical-historical class since 2016; since December 2011 member of the Advisory Board of the Rachel Carson Center. In addition, since 2012 she has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Environmental History (KAJAK) at the Historical Institute of Tallinn University and at the Environmental History Center in Saint Petersburg.

She was significantly involved in nine books, has written a total of 136 articles and book chapters, and has given 160 scientific and 94 lectures to a broader public as well as numerous guest lectures. Winiwarter was the long-time editor of GAIA and is a member of the editorial team of various magazines and series.

Awards

Verena Winiwarter was elected Scientist of the Year 2013 by the Club of Education and Science Journalists on January 7, 2014 . Your book History of our Environment. Sixty journeys through time (together with Hans-Rudolf Bork ) was voted Science Book of the Year 2015. In 2015, the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute listed her at 47th place in its Thought Leaders list for German-speaking countries. In 2019 she was awarded the City of Vienna Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences .

Publications (selection)

Individual publications and essays

  • John Robert McNeill , Verena Winiwarter: Breaking the Sod. Humankind, History and Soil. In: Science . Vol. 304, 11 June 2004, pp. 1627-1629.
  • John Robert McNeill, Verena Winiwarter (eds.): Soils and Societies. Perspectives from Environmental History. The White Horse Press, Isle of Harris 2006.
  • Rolf Peter Sieferle , Fridolin Krausmann, Heinz Schandl, Verena Winiwarter: The end of the surface: On the social metabolism of industrialization (= environmental historical research. Vol. 2). Böhlau, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-412-31805-1 .
  • Verena Winiwarter, Martin Knoll: Environmental history. An introduction. UTB Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007.
  • Verena Winiwarter: Haereticus scripsit hunc librum. The agricultural library of the Melk Benedictine Abbey and its readers. In: Communications from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research . Vol. 117 (2009), pp. 225-244.
  • Verena Winiwarter and Martin H. Gerzabek (eds.): The challenge of sustaining soils: Natural and social ramifications of biomass production in a changing world (= Interdisciplinary Perspectives No. 1). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2012.
  • Verena Winiwarter, Martin Schmid, Gert Dressel: Looking at half a millennium of co-existence: The Danube in Vienna as a socio-natural site. In: Water History. Vol. 5 (2013), No. 2 (Thematic Issue on the Viennese Danube), pp. 101-119.
  • Verena Winiwarter, Hans-Rudolf Bork : History of our environment: Sixty journeys through time. Primus, Darmstadt 2014, ISBN 978-3-86312-069-6 ( reading sample ).

Editing

  • Co-editor of the environmental historical research series . Böhlau, Cologne, since 2004.
  • Editorial Board: Environment and History. Cambridge, Isle of Harris, since 1/2006.
  • International Advisory Board: Klaudyan. Internet Journal for Historical Geography and Environmental History. Prague, since 2006.
  • Editorial Board: Global Environment. Journal of History and Natural and Social Sciences. Naples, since 1/2007.
  • Editorial Board: Environmental History. Durham, NC, 3/2008 - 3/2014.
  • Editor: GAIA . Co-editor since 5/2007, main editor from 12/2008 to 02/2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Verena Winiwarter, Univ.Prof. Ing.Dr.phil. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, accessed on September 23, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b Curriculum Vitae Univ.Prof. Ing.Dr.phil. Verena Winiwarter. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, accessed on September 23, 2018 .
  3. ↑ http://www.umweltgeschichte.uni-klu.ac.at/index,6536,URBWATER.html
  4. ↑ http://www.umweltgeschichte.uni-klu.ac.at/index,4710,How+skiers%C2%B4sensations+shaped+Alpine+valleys.html
  5. ^ Commission for interdisciplinary ecological studies
  6. ^ Rachel Carson Center
  7. ↑ Thought Leaders 2015 in German-speaking countries , accessed on January 1, 2016.
  8. ↑ Prices of the City of Vienna 2019. In: PID Press and Information Service of the City of Vienna. August 12, 2019, accessed August 13, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Winiwarter, Verena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian environmental historian
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna