From June 13th to 15th, 2026, Leonie Hesselmann attended the Young Economic Geographers Network (YEGN) workshop in Gothenburg, Sweden. She presented her current research on the role of infrastructure in the regional development of a rural region in Namibia. In her presentation, she discussed mechanisms that diminish the positive contribution of infrastructure. In addition to intensive academic exchange, the workshop offered valuable opportunities to network with international doctoral students in economic geography.

In June 2026, Ole Lück attended the 24th Nordic Conference on Development Economics in Växjö. There, he presented the first study from his doctoral dissertation. In his presentation, he explained how climate shocks affect families’ entrepreneurial engagement in rural Southeast Asia. The conference provided valuable opportunities for academic exchange and networking with leading scholars in development economics.

We are delighted to welcome Hoang Dieu Linh as a new member of our research group. Dieu Linh is a PhD student in Economic Geography, supervised by Javier Revilla Diez. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the ‘impact of new-generation free trade agreements on livelihoods in rural areas of Vietnam’. In her research, Dieu Linh examines how new-generation free trade agreements affect the socio-economic well-being of rural communities in Vietnam, with a focus on livelihoods, income opportunities and local development dynamics.

From 27 to 29 May 2026, Leonie Hesselmann attended the IGU conference at the Turku School of Economics in Finland. Researchers from various countries discussed the challenges and prospects of economic geography, with a focus on ‘Strengthening Economic Resilience’.  Leonie Hesselmann presented the findings of the second chapter of her doctoral thesis, in which she critically examines infrastructure-based development and policy debates in the Global South. The event provided an inspiring setting for in-depth academic exchange and offered valuable insights for her future research.

From 20 to 30 April, Justina Nangolo took part in the international doctoral course in economic geography at Utrecht University. She presented the third chapter of her doctoral thesis, entitled “Infrastructural Assemblages and Uneven Livelihoods: Roads, Corridors, and Communal Conservancies in Rural Namibia.” The summer school brought together experienced researchers and PhD students from various disciplines and countries. In addition to the lectures, students presented their research and provided each other with constructive feedback; this was followed by critical discussions and the exchange of insights.

In March, Ole Lück visited the Ho Chi Minh University of Banking in Ho Chi Minh City to work on his second study alongside Dr Van Tran as part of his doctoral thesis. This study examines how recurring typhoon risks in rural Vietnam alter households’ perception of risk, and what consequences this has for business decisions and for coping with welfare losses following typhoons. In addition to the joint development of the study, the focus was also on academic exchange and the presentation of his research at Dr Van Tran’s institute.

In March 2026, Emma Galbraith conducted a research trip to Vietnam to advance the third paper of her dissertation. This paper examines how renewable energy projects in Vietnam are connected to international voluntary carbon markets and explores the implications of these linkages for broader regional economic development. To gain insights into practical experiences, business impacts, and processes of capability development, she conducted interviews with practitioners working on the ground. During her stay, she also presented and discussed her second paper manuscript, “State Capital in the Energy Transition: Host-State Agency and Geopolitical Proximity in Service-Sector Coupling,” in a seminar with faculty members at Ho Chi Minh City Banking University, as well as in a workshop with practitioners organised by the Institute for Circular Economy Development (ICED).

TVSEP data users are invited to participate in the TVSEP Virtual Data User Workshop on 26–27 March 2026. The workshop combines scientific paper presentations with hands-on training in using the TVSEP data. The conference program will include scientific papers that use the TVSEP data, but also invites all further papers related to poverty dynamics and sustainable development in rural Southeast Asia. The training may cover topics such as accessing the TVSEP data, merging panel waves, constructing key indicators, and working with the data in Stata. Here is the link to the pgrogram as well as the meeting link. 

On February 19, 2026, the team working on the project “Cross-border wildlife hunting – (il)legal value chains in protected areas” met with cooperation partners. Under the leadership of Job Lohmann and Linus Kalvelage, various perspectives on (wildlife) crime were presented. The focus was on, among other things, the investigation of organized crime, Namibian legislation on wildlife crime, and questions of research ethics. Following on from this, the contributions were discussed with a view to the ongoing project.

In a new episode of the institute’s own podcast, “Geonauten”, Emma Galbraith talks to podcast host Dr Holger Kretschmer about research funding and how DFG projects generally work. She offers insights into her day-to-day academic work as part of her PhD project and explains how research takes shape in practice, from developing research topics and conducting fieldwork to publishing articles. She also reports on her current research into green finance and energy transitions in Southeast Asia, and on Singapore’s role in global production and financial networks.

Linus Kalvelage has been appointed to the Young Academy of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and the Arts. Established in 2006, the program supports outstanding early-career researchers with completed doctorates as well as exceptional artistic talents. The Academy brings together leading scholars from the humanities, natural sciences, medicine, engineering, and economics, along with renowned artists. At its core is the promotion of interdisciplinary dialogue, fostered through open class meetings and exchange with actors from politics, business, and culture.

From 18 to 19 December 2025, the TVSEP team met for an internal workshop hosted by Javier Revilla Diez. Recent findings were exchanged the strategic future of the project was discusses. The first day featured internal research presentations covering a wide range of TVSEP core topics, including rural household incomes, resilience and migration, agricultural markets, crop commercialisation, labour allocation, digitalisation, and climate-smart farming in Southeast Asia and beyond. On the second day, participants focused on internal TVSEP matters in a plenary session, followed by an in-depth discussion on the future of TVSEP and the preparation of a potential new joint research proposal. 
 

Every year, we look forward to our working group's Christmas party –  a highlight of the year! All the classics were there: we started with a stroll through the Christmas market, followed by an international buffet (featuring Bulgarian, Burmese, Afghan, Turkish, Namibian, Vietnamese and Baden delicacies, among others), there was a Christmas story written by Leonie Hesselmann and Emma Galbraith, a funny Christmas quiz with different levels of difficulty – and, to top it all off, a cheerful round of karaoke.

On 13–14 November 2025, Justina Nangolo participated in the RSA Regional Futures Conference in London, where she shared the idea for her third paper of her PhD, titled "Paths of Development: Comparing Livelihood Impacts of Corridors, Roads, and Communal Conservancies in Rural Namibia." The session sparked fruitfull discussions, with participants offering thoughtful suggestions on refining the focus of the study and strengthening the research design. The insights shared and connections made during the conference will be valuable as Justina Nangolo develops the paper for publication and continues to build her academic career.

On 13 and 14 November 2025, Emma Galbraith, Leonie Hesselmann and Javier Revilla Diez took part in the Economic Geography Project Workshop in Wiesbaden-Naurod. In her presentation entitled ‘Beyond passive hosts: host country agency and geopolitical proximity in the strategic coupling of foreign state investors’, Emma Galbraith presented the draft of the second paper of her dissertation. In her presentation ‘Future-making in Rural Africa in Times of Crises: Unpacking Agency for Regional Resilience through Aspirations and Decision-Making,’ Leonie Hesselmann presented the current status of the first paper. The conference provided ample opportunity for stimulating discussions and exchanges.

From July to September 2025, Leonie Hesselmann travelled through Namibia's Zambezi region to research the cattle value chain for her doctoral thesis. She conducted numerous interviews with farmers about their experiences and how they deal with crises such as droughts, animal diseases and human-wildlife-conflicts. These were complemented by interviews with stakeholders along the value chain, such as those working in slaughterhouses and ministries. First results show that the cattle value chain faces major challenges. The data collected is now being comprehensively evaluated to identify strategies for strengthening resilience and developing the value chain.

On 6 October, 2025 Mfundo Mlilo successfully defended his PhD with summa cum laude. His doctoral research examines the complex processes and theoretical foundations underlying the emergence and evolution of industries and economic activities. The thesis uses the case of tourism development in the KAZA region in Southetn Africa to illustrate how such processes unfold in a Global South context. Congratulations!

In Juli 2025, Linus Kalvelage, together with Prof. Dr. Frank Neubacher from the Criminology Institute at the University of Cologne, successfully secured an exciting three-year DFG-funded research project. Titled “Wildlife Hunting Across Borders: (Il-)Legal Value Chains in Conservation Areas,” the project investigates how wildlife is transformed into commodities and how legislation and international demand affect ecosystems and local communities. The focus is on the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) and transit countries such as Germany. Through interviews, focus groups, and data analysis, the team aims to reveal how legal and illegal markets overlap and what impact they have on conservation and regional economies.

From Master’s Thesis to First Publication: Local Impact on Namibia’s Green Hydrogen Development: Tom Schnurr, together with Linus Kalvelage, has published an article in Regional Science Policy and Practice: “Towards Inclusive Path Transplantation: Local Agency for Green Hydrogen Linkage Creation in Namibia.” Based on his master’s thesis, for which he conducted a survey of Namibian solar companies, the study shows how local firms can actively participate in Namibia’s emerging green hydrogen economy. Measures such as workforce training, inter-firm cooperation, and supportive regulations can help increase local value creation.

In August 2025, Ole Lück took part in the 64th ERSA Congress in Athens, where he presented preliminary findings from his doctoral reseach. His talk highlighted how climate shocks influence entrepreneurial engagement in rural Southeast Asia. With around 1,000 participants, the congress offered valuable opportunities for academic exchange, constructive feedback, and networking with leading scholars in regioanl science. 

As part of the master’s seminar Recent Research Topics in Physical Geography led by Mirijam Zickel, Justina Nangolo had the pleasure of being interviewed by students about her recent paper on infrastructure and development in Namibia’s Zambezi Region. The resulting blog post examines the role of roads in shaping regional development, highlighting the importance of considering broader outcomes beyond construction, while raising critical questions about what constitutes true development. Here is the link to the blog post that shares insights from this exchange.

Mfundo Mlilo has been awarded the 2024 Geoforum Best Student Paper Award for his article Coloniality of power and the imaginaries of tourism in Victoria Falls. It adopts the concept of coloniality of power to illuminate past continuities and explain the uneven participation and value capture among actors using the example of the very popular tourist destination Victoria Falls, a majestic waterfall in Zimbabwe. More fundamentally, it provides a brief reflection on how tourism GVCs can be extricated from colonial and racial legacies.

From 20 July to 5 August 2025, Prof. Revilla Diez, phD student Mfundo Mlilo, 15 bachelor's students and two master's students were in Namibia. During the first week of the excursion, the group intensively explored the country's colonial and apartheid history and its effects, which are still felt today. They then worked together with Namibian students in a mini field school on three new tourism concepts designed to better exploit the tourism potential of Katima Mulilo in the Zambezi region: adventure tourism, casino & public entertainment, and cultural and heritage-based tourism. Find out more here.

In June 2025, the Global Conference on Economic Geography took place at Clark University in the United States. Dr. Linus Kalvelage gave a presentation on the geopolitics of global production networks using the example of the green hydrogen industry in Namibia, Emma Galbraith examined Singapore's state-sponsored investments in Vietnam, and Mfundo Mlilo discussed tourism concepts and development paths in the KAZA region in southern Africa. Together with Javier Revilla Diez, they participated in important debates on economic geography alongside international scholars.

Leonie Hesselmann attended the Regional Studies Association Annual Conference in Porto in May 2025 and presented the preliminary findings of her doctoral research. In her presentation, she explained how rural households in Africa are affected by multiple crises and how they make decisions and shape their future under these difficult conditions. The conference provided an inspiring platform for interdisciplinary exchange on regional development, resilience and global challenges, as well as for expanding and deepening scientific networks.

Best Paper Award for young researchers goes to Dr Linus Kalvelage
Dr. Linus Kalvelage and his co-author Benedikt Walker have been awarded the Early Career Researcher Paper Prize by the renowned Journal of Economic Geography. The award-winning publication, entitled ‘Strategic coupling beyond borders: Germany's extraterritorial agency in Namibia's green hydrogen industry’, analyses Germany's role in the development of Namibia's hydrogen economy against the backdrop of geopolitical and climate-economic challenges. The article shows how states – even in liberal and coordinated market economies – pursue targeted extraterritorial strategies to link global production networks with national decarbonisation goals. The article can be found here, and the announcement of the award here.

Together with the College of Economics, Law and Government at the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (CELG-UEH), our working group organised an international conference on ‘Poverty dynamics and sustainable development in Thailand and Vietnam’ in Ho Chi Minh City on 6 and 7 March as part of the TVSEP project (DFG long-term project). Prof Dr Javier Revilla Diez and Ole Lück discussed the latest research findings in the context of regional development in Thailand and Vietnam at the conference.

From 24 to 28 February 2025, Emma Galbraith took part in the Summer School and subsequent conference on Financial Geography, organised by the Financial Geography Network under the direction of Prof. Dariusz Wójcik at the National University of Singapore. At the Summer School for Early Career Researchers, she joined international researchers in intensive discussions on theory development, methods and the future of financial geography in Asia and the Global South. At the conference, she presented the first results of her doctoral research on Singapore's role as a financial and energy hub in the age of Net-Zero.

In February 2025, on the home straight of the second phase of the SFB Future Rural Africa, Mfundo Mlilo and Leonie Hesselmann, together with Ndapewa Fenny Nakanyete and Javier Revilla Diez, shared research results with local stakeholders in a feedback workshop. The workshop brought together key stakeholders, researchers, policymakers and industry experts to discuss the challenges and opportunities of tourism development in the region. It took place in cooperation with the Wildlife Management and Ecotourism Department of the University of Namibia. Based on the presentation of the research results, concrete steps to strengthen the tourism profile of the Zambezi region were discussed. 

In February 2025, Fenny Nakanyete visited the Khewe San community in Namibia's Bwabwata National Park again as part of our project  Future in Chains of the CRC Future Rural Africa together with Javier Revilla Diez, Mfundo Mlilo and Leonie Hesselmann.  Fenny Nakanyete had conducted a large part of the interviews for her doctoral thesis there, and now she was there to share her research results. The Khewe San, who depend on the harvest and trade of the Devil's Claw, learned how much they are exploited in these transactions and thus received information for a better negotiating position. You can read the report of Fennys Results-Workshop here.

It was a particular pleasure and honour for us to welcome the renowned scientist and conceptual father of global production networks, Prof. Henry Wai-chung Yeung, to Cologne on 9th December 2024. In the context of a workshop moderated by Prof. Peter Dannenberg on the topic ‘Sustainable Global Production in Times of Multiple Crises?’, Dr. Linus Kalvelage and Dr. PD Alexander Follmann presented current research projects, which were then discussed by Prof. Henry Yeung. Prof. Henry Yeung then presented his book ‘Theory and Explanation in Geography’, which was then critically discussed by the doctoral students Emma Galbraith (from our working group) and Johanna Fellbrich (working group Urban and Regional Development), moderated by Prof. Javier Revilla Diez. In the evening, Prof. Yeung gave a lecture on the dynamic development of the semiconductor industry in geopolitically troubled times as part of the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde's lecture series. It was a stimulating day with many fruitful and inspiring discussions! We thank Henry Yeung for his visit!

From 12th to 13th November 2024, the doctoral students of the working group took part in a workshop on ‘Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches in Sustainability Research: Mutual Insights and Learning’, organised by Prof. Dr. Javier Revilla Diez and Prof. Dr. Christina Bogner at the University of Cologne. The workshop aimed to combine qualitative and quantitative methods in order to better understand the complexity of sustainability research and develop innovative, interdisciplinary approaches.

Ndapewa Fenny Nakanyete, affiliated with Project C01 Future in Chains through a bi-nationally supervised doctoral program (Cotutelle) between the University of Cologne and the University of Namibia, was awarded her bi-national PhD degree during the University of Namibia's graduation ceremony on 9 October 2024. Her dissertation, titled "Indigenous Knowledge for Sustainable Livelihoods: Evaluating Non-Timber Forest Product Value Chains for San Communities in Northern Namibia," was jointly supervised by Prof. Revilla Diez from the University of Cologne and Prof. Kenneth Matengu from the University of Namibia. Fenny Nakanyete sees the Cotutelle doctoral student model as an important step towards decolonisation, the promotion of a fair distribution of intellectual property and the promotion of research on post-colonial structures.

We are pleased to announce that the German Research Foundation (DFG) has awarded Linus Kalvelage a research project entitled FGHyTransition: Fossil-Green Hydrogen Path Creation for Transformative Development in Namibia and Vietnam. This project aims to explore the multi-scalar interrelationships between the emerging green hydrogen industry and the fossil fuel industry, analysing actors, power dynamics and dependencies in order to assess the opportunity space for green industrialisation in the Global South.

The publication “Nation-state influence on tourism path creaton in Southern Africa”, written by Mfundo Mlilo with Prof. Revilla Diez and Prof. Michael Bollig, was published in Regional Studies in September 2024. It examines the development of tourism pathways in the post-colonial states of Southern Africa and specifically in the border regions of Chobe, Victoria Falls and Zambezi. Building on the concept of the Trinity of Change Agency, it shows the importance of the nation state in the development of institutional entrepreneurship and the impact of triggering events. The interplay between regional actors and a responsive nation state plays a crucial role in shaping tourism pathways.

In August 2024, Prof. Revilla Diez and our research assistants Emma Galbraith, Ole Lück and Dr. Linus Kalvelage met representatives of our long-standing cooperation partner Ciem (Vietnam Institute of Central Economic Management) in Hanoi: President Dr. Tran Thi Hong Minh and staff members Nguyễn Anh Dương and Đỗ Thị Lê Mai . We presented our three current research projects in Vietnam: Green Finance (Emma Galbraith), Energy Transition (Dr. Linus Kalvelage) and the long-term socio-economic panel project in Thailand and Vietnam (TVSEP) (Ole Lück).

 From 21 to 26 July 2024, Linus Kalvelage took part in the Summer Institute in Economic Geography, which was jointly organized this year by Jamie Peck, Henry Yeung and Dariusz Woijzeck at the National University of Singapore. In addition to exciting discussions on the future of economic geography, the program also included day excursions - including to Jurong Island Industrial Park, a center of the global oil and gas industry.

Prof. Javier Revilla Diez nahm während seines Forschungsaufenthaltes in Vietnam im Juli 2024 an der Annual international conference on Economy, Law, and Government 2024 (ELG2024) an der University of Economics in Ho-Chi-Minh-Stadt teil. Javier Revilla Diez organisierte eine Session über das langfristige sozioökonomische Panel-Projekt in Thailand und Vietnam (TVSEP) und präsentierte ein Paper, das er zusammen mit Franziska Sohns veröffentlicht hat: Explaining micro-enterprise survival in rural Vietnam: a multilevel Analysis. Weitere Details können Sie in diesem Video sehen.

Wir freuen uns, Leonie Hesselmann und Ole Lück  in unserer Arbeitsgruppe begrüßen zu dürfen!  Leonie Hesselmann forscht zum Projekt „Future in Chains - Socio-Economic Impacts of Growth Corridors“ mit einem besonderen Schwerpunkt auf die sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen globaler und regionaler Wertschöpfungsketten. Ihr Forschungsinteresse gilt dabei dem stärkeren Einbezug der lokalen Bevölkerung in regionale Entwicklungsprozesse. Ole Lücks Projekt ist eingebettet in das ebenfalls von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) geförderte Langzeitprojekt Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel (TVSEP), in dem insbesondere der Einfluss des Unternehmertums im ländlichen Vietnam und Thailand auf den Strukturwandel und die regionale Diversifizierung untersucht wird. Zu seinen Forschungsinteressen gehören regionale und globale Disparitäten und die Triebkräfte der regionalen Entwicklung im Globalen Süden.