IFF Social Ecology e-Newsletter Nr. 5 – January 2004

+ Department News:
– New home base for IFF and the Social Ecology team:
„Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies“ with international „Virtual Collegium“ at the University of
Klagenfurt
+ Support from Austrian Science Fund:
– Long-term Transformation of Society’s Natural Relations
– Global Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production 1700-2000
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Department News

New home base for IFF and the Social Ecology team:
„Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies“ with international „Virtual Collegium“ at the University of
Klagenfurt
After 25 years of IFF’s „inter-university“ status affiliated with the Universities of Graz, Innsbruck,
Klagenfurt and Vienna, new legislation regarding universities in Austria has led to IFF’s needing to
choose a new, unequivocal academic home base. The University of Klagenfurt, one of the younger
Austrian universities, has long been familiar with IFF’s unique features as an interdisciplinary institute
and has offered to grant IFF the status of a „Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies.“
IFF has proudly accepted this offer. In this period of increasing scarcity of resources for public higher
education, a scarcity which nourishes defensive bureaucratic streamlining, we are glad to ally
ourselves with an institutional partner unconventional enough to commit to interdisciplinarity and
interregional networking and to national and international cooperation as paths to success and
academic reputation. We hope that we will be able to use the new opportunities before us in mutual
support to build on one another’s strengths and to reinforce our environmental and natural science
competence by stable partnerships across a wide range of organizations and people.
„Social Ecology“ will remain one of six organizational subdivisions of IFF’S Vienna node and will
continue to engage in intensive research and offer courses to students from Austrian and international
universities. We will maintain our commitment to teaching in collaboration with the University of Vienna
and will intensify collaboration with the Vienna-based University of Natural Resources and Applied Life
Sciences. An internationally accessible doctoral and masters program of our own – „Environment and
Society“ – is in preparation.
Beyond the members of the interdisciplinary faculty at the University of Klagenfurt, the university’s
president will be asking a number of renowned personalities worldwide to be part of a „Virtual
Collegium“ advising him on our Institute’s affairs and supporting the Social Ecology Vienna team in
holding its course and achieving further scientific excellence.

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Support from the Austrian Science Fund for basic research in Social Ecology
IFF Social Ecology is proud to announce having been granted substantial funding from the National
Austrian Science Fund for two new research projects to begin this year. Both projects will extend over
the next three years and allow the IFF Social Ecology Vienna team to systematically improve on its
data base for long term socio-metabolic processes and continue developing the theoretical base of
social ecology.
* Long-term Transformation of Society’s Natural Relations
– Project manager: Marina Fischer-Kowalski
* Global Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production 1700-2000
– Project manager: Helmut Haberl

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