The University of Bern has created a new professorship in sustainable development at the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) and has appointed Peter Messerli, Director of CDE, to the post. The new professorship at CDE is also affiliated to the university’s Institute of Geography.
Born in Bern, Peter Messerli studied at the University of Bern’s Institute of Geography, obtaining his PhD there in 2002. His research interests centre on the sustainable use of land systems in Asia and Africa under the influence of globalization and global change. He also engages with theoretical and conceptual questions related to sustainable development, as well as with inter- and transdisciplinary research approaches and processes of evidence-based policy- and decision-making. Peter Messerli was a research scientist at the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research North-South, a 12-year transdisciplinary research programme led by the University of Bern, and coordinated the entire programme for four years. He has spent over ten years doing research in Madagascar, Laos, and other countries of the global South. In 2010, when CDE was relaunched as an interdisciplinary research centre of the University of Bern, Peter Messerli was appointed its director. At the international level, he co-chairs the Global Land Project of Future Earth and represents CDE in other networks concerned with sustainable development. In September 2015, as scientific representative of the Swiss delegation, he took part in negotiations on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York.
The University of Bern’s Executive Board has also appointed Chinwe Ifejika Speranza as successor to Hans Hurni as Professor at the Institute of Geography’s Department of Integrative Geography. Just as Peter Messerli’s professorship at CDE is affiliated to the Department of Integrative Geography, Chinwe Ifejika Speranza’s research group is a member of CDE. These institutional ties will ensure continuation of the long-standing close collaboration between CDE and the Institute of Geography. We wish Chinwe Ifejika Speranza and Peter Messerli a good start in their new positions.
