Anna Rudloff

• Social and cultural dimensions of dealing with natural hazard risks
• Power-knowledge dynamics in disaster risk management
• Rural geographies
• Sociotechnical imaginaries
• Environmental justice

• Alps
• Northern Europe
• Italy

• 1/2023-3/2026: Doctoral scholarship by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)
• 10/2022-12/2022: Doctoral scholarship, State Graduate Funding of the state of Baden-Württemberg (Landesgraduiertenförderung)

• since 2014: Facilitator in the youth education project “KlimaSail”, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany
• since 2013: Facilitator for sustainability education, German Commission for UNESCO (international cultural voluntary service “kulturweit”)

since 01/2023		Doctoral scholarship by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)
10/2022-12/2022		Doctoral scholarship by Landesgraduiertenförderung Baden-Württemberg
09/2020-09/2022		Research associate and lecturer at the chair for Geography of Global Change, Institute for Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg
04/2020 - 08/2020		Research assistant at the chair for Social Dynamics in Coastal and Marine Areas, Institute for Geography, Kiel University
05/2019 - 10/2019 08/2018 - 11/2018 01/2016 - 03/2016		Research assistant and research semester, Department for Climate and Disaster Risks, Institute for Earth Observation, Eurac research (Bolzano/Italy)
10/2017 - 04/2020		MSc. Sustainability, Society and the Environment, Christian-Albrechts-Unversität zu Kiel
08/2015 - 12/2015		Exchange semester, University of Eastern Finland (Joensuu)
10/2013 - 04/2017		BSc. Geography (Minor: nature conservation and landscape planning), Kiel University
08/2012 - 08/2013		Voluntary service, Mihály Babits High School and Vocational Secondary School Pécs, Hungary

 

Abstract

Under the pressure of global societal challenges, increasing risks in the context of natural hazards pose a significant challenge for many regions in Switzerland, including many smaller mountain communities. Reactions to this challenge include calls for progress in knowledge production and risk communication to ensure a high level of acceptance of risk management measures. The central aim of this project is to expand the understanding of political dimensions of knowledge dynamics in natural hazard risk management and to develop an analytical framework for analysing justice implications. Empirically, the project focuses on a rural community in the Entlebuch region (Canton Lucerne), whose development has been linked to social negotiations on how to deal with natural hazards for a long time (e.g. construction of protective structures against debris flows, establishment of a local avalanche service). Processes and contexts of knowledge production and circulation as well as their interrelations with social processes of spatial production are analysed across scales on the basis of a qualitative field study starting from the local context.

Conceptually, the project uses the idea of socio-technical imaginaries (STI) to analyse the links and interactions between normative, epistemic and material dimensions of risk management. Based on intensive analyses of everyday practices and interpretative patterns at a local level, the project relates historical and current spatial visions of desired futures to contestations about the management of natural hazards and related processes of knowledge production and circulation.

Based on interviews, informal conversations, observations and document analyses at local, cantonal and national level (e.g. with practitioners, political decision-makers, scientists, residents), the study investigates how past and current visions of desired futures (e.g. concerning the development of rural mountain regions or the significance of technical solutions in socio-environmental relations) materialise in natural hazard risk management and related processes of knowledge production and circulation. In this context, the categorisation of the respective processes in sociotechnical imaginaries across scales is of vital importance.

Funding and Cooperation

• 1/2023-3/2026: Doctoral scholarship by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes)

• 10/2022-12/2022: Doctoral scholarship, State Graduate Funding of the state of Baden-Württemberg (Landesgraduiertenförderung)

• - Funding of research stay 2023: Academic Society Freiburg, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL

• - Cooperation: UNESCO Biosphere Entlebuch