We are ComPASS!

Funding body: OeAD, Cooperation Development Research

Researcher: Heide Bruckner (Principal Investigator), in partnership with collaborators at Solomon Islands National University and the University of Papua New Guinea

Duration: 2024-2027

MTC Mangroves is an action-oriented, participatory research project working closely with indigenous Pacific communities in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. The goals of the project are to better understand, and support, communities’ management of their mangroves forests to ensure sustainable food livelihoods and indigenous sovereignty in the face of climate change. By unpacking both gendered and cultural dimensions of mangrove forests, the project contributes important social science research to the predominate framing of mangroves as (only) carbon-sequestering ecosystems.

Funded by: Elisabeth-List-Fellowship for Gender Studies (University of Graz)

Head of research: Ulrich Ermann, Anke Strüver

Research team: Heide Bruckner, Sarah Wack

Duration: 2022-2024

This research study aims to better understand the relationship between (social) gender and experience among geographers employed at an Austrian university, especially from the perspective of postdocs and professors. Although gender equality measures have been implemented officially for decades, there are still many gender barriers that prevent female postdoctoral researchers from obtaining permanent positions in research and teaching. This qualitative research aims to better understand which gender barriers persist and identifies the programs, formal and informal networks, and support systems that geographers working at Austrian universities find useful in fostering an inclusive work environment.

The study is funded by the Elisabeth List Fellowship Program of the University of Graz. It is a continuation of previous research conducted in collaboration with the Austrian Geography Association.

Research associate: Heide Bruckner

Duration: 2021-2025

Project homepage: https://falah.unc.nc/en/home

FALAH is a multidisciplinary research project of the European Union's Horizon 2020 program that focuses on family agriculture, nutrition, lifestyle and health of the populations of the South Pacific islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. As part of this project, Heide Bruckner researched the gender-specific harvesting methods of food from mangrove landscapes in the Solomon Islands and investigated their contribution to indigenous food sovereignty.

Research networking for regional development in Styria

Funding: Province of Styria, Department of Regional Planning and Regional Development

Funding amount: 80,000 euros plus internal funds from the University of Graz

Duration: 54 months: 08/2020 - 01/2025

Project management: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ulrich Ermann

Project assistant / PhD student: Mag^.a Sabine Hostniker

Cooperation partners

Province of Styria, Department of Regional Planning and Regional Development:
DI Harald Grießer, Mag. Martin Nagler, Marc M. Seebacher B.A. M.A.

Project content

The project "FoReSt" ("Research Networking for Regional Development in Styria") aims to establish and intensify cooperative relationships between the University of Graz (Institute of Geography and Spatial Research and RCE Graz-Styria) and the Province of Styria (Department of Regional Planning and Regional Development). The aim is to create closer links between research and practice in the field of regional development in Styria and to strengthen the basis for joint projects. Relevant subject areas are, for example, related to Styria:

• Spatial-structural developments and urban-rural relationships in the context of social macro-trends and transformation processes (including with regard to climate change, energy, mobility, etc.)
• Regions as living environments: Regional images and identification between regional awareness and regional chauvinism
• Regional economic cycles, regionality and regionalization (e.g. with regard to consumption patterns, agriculture and nutrition)
• Digitalization, innovation and employment in the (particularly rural) regions
• Regional governance processes, regional cooperation and participation

To this end, a dissertation project will be funded that thematically lies at the intersection between the corresponding academic research focus areas and the practice-related application areas and deals with an exemplary question in one of the aforementioned research areas. In this way, basic knowledge is to be made available to authorities and stakeholders in regional development in Styria and at the same time practical knowledge is to be integrated into university research and teaching. In addition, student theses (in particular for students of the Master's degree program "Sustainable Urban and Regional Development") will be advertised and funded in order to promote a practice- and profession-oriented academic education and to support the scientific foundation of regional development practice with empirical research. Regular workshops and working meetings are also planned in order to discuss current topics in state and regional development, research gaps, methodological issues and funding programs.

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• Gatsinos, N. & Stockdale, C. (forthcoming). Labouring Together: An Assemblage Perspective on Rural Collaborative Workspaces. In: Avdikos V., Schmidt, S., Mariotti, I., Capdevila, I., Lang, T., & Fabinyi, V. (eds) Collaborative Workspaces Beyond the Urban. Palgrave Macmillan.

• Hostniker, S. (2025). Region in Beziehung. Eine performativ-empirische Erkundung alltäglicher Identifikationsprozesse mittels Paarinterviews. Geogr. Helv., tba

• Gatsinos, N. (2025). Blurring the lines: precarious lives and social reproduction in labour geography. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2025.2478849

• Bruckner, H.K. 2025. “Muddying the grounds of environmental justice in the Pacific mangroves: from recognition to feeling for justice the food-climate nexus”. Geo: Geography and Environment. vol 12, e70012. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70012

• Bruckner, H.K., Bellante, L. 2025. “Practicing intersectional food pedagogies in higher education: an autoethnography of two critical food studies professors”. Food Culture & Society, Special Issue: The racialized, classed and gendered politics of food pedagogies. 1-20. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2025.2457280

• Bruckner, H.K. and Paia, M.T. 2025. Why mangroves and people benefit from feminist food research: insights from Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands. SPC Women in Fisheries Bulletin. No. 41, pp. 4-8.

• Bruckner, H.K., Wack, S., Ermann, U. and Strüver, A. 2025. Geographie mit Gender-Gaps: Geschlechterungerechtigkeiten im wissenschaftlichen Alltag in Österreich. Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 166, 9–39. https://doi.org/10.1553/moegg166-103

• Hostniker, S., Seebacher, M.M. and Ermann, U. 2025. Regionen in Resonanz: Regionalentwicklung als performative Praxis. Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 83(3), 205–219. https://doi.org/10.14512/rur.3087

• Hostniker, S. and Meyer, F. 2024. Blinded by the lights. Improvisational theater as a method for researching regional identities. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung /Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 25(3), Art. 7, https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-25.2.4223

• Bruckner, H.K. and Paia, M.T. 2024. From mangroves to womangroves to feminist foodscapes: (en)gendering research on indigenous food livelihoods in the Solomon Islands. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10634-8

• Bruckner, H.K. 2023. Digesting ourselves and others through a critical pedagogy of food and race. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2023.2255547

• Colombino, A. and Bruckner, H.K. 2023. Methods in Human-Animal Studies: Engaging with Animals through the Social Sciences. London and New York: Routledge.

• Gatsinos, N. and Höfner, M. 2023. Exhausting coworking: on the implications of reproductive work for coworkers’ subjectivities. In: J. Merkel, D. Pettas and V. Avdikos (eds.). Coworking Spaces. Alternative Topologies and Transformative Potentials. Cham: Springer, 125–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42268-3_9

• Höfner, M. and Gatsinos, N. 2023. Unfinished sympathy: on the limitations of sharing as a work practice in community-led coworking. Cogent Social Sciences, 9(2), 2245236. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2023.2245236

• Ermann, U., Höfner, M., Hostniker, S., Preininger, E.M. and Simić, D. 2022. Die Region. Eine Begriffserkundung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839460108

• Alice Senarclens de Grancy / Preininger, Ernst Michael: Im Märzen der Bauer den Laptop anwirft. In: Die Presse. 12.03.2022
• "Regionality as a great deceptive maneuver". Die Presse. Published on 5.2.2022