Hartmut Fünfgeld (born 1975) is a German geographer. He is professor for "Geography of the global change" at the institute for socio-environmental studies and geography ("german: Institut für Umweltsozialwissenschaften und Geographie") at the University of Freiburg.
Career.
Hartmut Fünfgeld studied Geography as a major together with two minor subjects, Ethnology and Geology, from 1997 to 2002. During his studies he spent one term abroad in Melbourne and completed them in 2002 with a degree in Geography. Then he worked as a researcher at Heidelberg University and in 2007 obtained a doctorate in geography for his work "Fishing in Muddy Waters: Socio-Environmental Relations under the Impact of Violence in Eastern Sri Lanka“. He went to Melbourne and worked for different organisations in the fields of climate change adaption and environmental politics, amongst others the RMIT Climate Change Adaptation Program of the University of Melbourne. There he became "Professor for Sustainability and City Planning" in 2016. In 2018 he moved on to the University of Freiburg, to work as a professor for the chair of "Geography of the Global Change" ("german: Geographie des Globalen Wandels").
Together with his study groups, he researches social and institutional impacts of climate change and climate change adaptability. In this field, Fünfgeld's team especially focuses on potentials for communal and regional planning. Further large-scale research areas are processes of social transformation and social justice in the context of global change.