Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gerhard

Ulrike Gerhard is a professor of Human Geography of North America at the Institute of Geography and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at Heidelberg University. She is head of the urban real-world laboratory “Sustainable Urban Development in the Knowledge-based Society” which runs an Urban Office at Heidelberg University and promotes cutting edge projects between the university, the city of Heidelberg, and the International Building Exhibition Heidelberg (IBA). She is member of the Advisory Board of the research network Spaces & Flows, chairperson of the mobility program “Urban Inequality in the Creative City” as well as Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, IL .

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Due to the expertise of Prof. Dr. Gerhard on urban geography and sustainable urban development, her research in CAS focuses on citizen participation, city-networks, and new governance processes. Here, the combination of bottom-up and top-down initiatives will be crucial to improve and implement climate action on a local and global scale. Thus, the geographical question of scale needs to be researched to provide a relational context for climate science that helps to mitigate climate change and its consequences.