Research Profile
The Geography Department at the University of Cologne has once again secured a top position in the DFG-Förderatlas 2018: second place, behind the Geography Department at the University of Bremen. In the 2009 DFG-Förderranking, the University of Cologne’s Geography Department even topped the list, coming first. This is an outstanding achievement and speaks to the exceptionally high level of activity among Cologne’s geographers, as the DFG Funding Ranking is an aggregate ranking of third-party funding secured from the DFG. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is Germany’s leading research funding body.
Examples of funded third-party-funded projects involving or led by geographers from Cologne include:
- DFG-Sonderforschungsbereich 806 „Our Way to Europe“
- DFG-Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 32 „Patterns in Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere-Systems - Monitoring, Modelling and Data Assimilation
- BMBF-Kompetenznetzwerk „CROP.SENSe.net“
- IB-BMBF: “International Center for Agro-Informatics and Sustainable Development – ICASD”
- Further research projects are described in the individual research groups
What sets the geography programme at the University of Cologne apart is that the research priorities of five of the current nine professorships in Physical Geography are in this field, thus demonstrating the strong natural sciences focus of geography at the University of Cologne. Key shared research priorities within the Institute of Geography lie in environmental and human-environment research, as well as metropolitan studies. Key research areas in Physical Geography include Quaternary research, hydrogeography, ecosystem modelling, soil geography and applied geomorphology. A methodologically oriented professorship in the field of GIS and remote sensing acts as a special bridge between Physical and Human Geography, both in teaching and in research. Key research areas in Human Geography include megacity research, environmentally-oriented economic geography and regional development.
The key areas of research and teaching not only facilitate a wide range of collaborations within the department (e.g. Quaternary research, geochronology, research into megacities and large cities, economic environmental research, GIS and remote sensing), but also interdisciplinary collaboration with various disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and economics. It is precisely this diversity of collaboration within the university and the resulting research projects and teaching programmes (e.g. IMES, CEA) that is a defining feature of the University of Cologne.
In addition to subject-specific laboratory and field methods (e.g. luminescence laboratory, soil chemistry, geomorphological-hydrological laboratory), methodological priorities lie in the development and application of GIS and remote sensing techniques, environmental and plant modelling, qualitative and quantitative empirical social research, and statistics.
Regional areas of focus include Northern and Southern Africa, the Mediterranean region, China, South Asia, Australia, North America, South-East Asia and Germany. The Department of Geography maintains close international links with a number of leading geographical institutes in these regions, partly through official Memoranda of Understanding and through DAAD-funded institutional partnerships.