Until my (recent) retirement I was a senior scientist at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ in Leipzig, Germany, and Professor of Ecology at the Technical University of Munich.
Being a biologist by education, the focus of most of my work was and is on the interface between ecology and conservation biology on the one hand and the humanities on the other. I am interested in approaching the subject of nature from various angles, both from a scientific one but also from that of philosophy (not the least ethics), the history of ideas and concepts, and from the social sciences. My concern is to apply insights and methodologies from the humanities to ecology and conservation, with the purpose to make these methodologies (and the perspectives they build on) useful for improving the conduct of ecology, conservation biology, and conservation. This should also help to further more reflexive and better human-nature relationships.
Major topics of my research have been the concepts of ecological units (community, ecosystem etc.), the concept of ecosystem services and its implications, different ideas of "function" and "functioning" in ecology and conservation, and – more recent – conservation concepts and human-nature relationships.