In our introductory session, you will:

• meet our team
• get an overview of our course and lecture structure
• try out our Engagement Lab
• and have the space to ask any questions you may have

The talk is based on the accumulation of waste. Its thesis is that the death of man and the environment expands the commodity space, sells in social reproduction time and boosts profit rates.

Dr. Ali Kadri is currently visiting professor at Sun Yat-sen University and has held roles at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the National University of Singapore. His recent book is titled The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction (2023).

SABAT
Over 40 years ago, Batkhorol Sagdkhorol, known as Sabat – a film student and diplomat from the Mongolian Embassy in East Berlin – vanished. Was he a spy, defector, on the run, or entangled in the regime’s affairs? Decades later, the filmmaker embarks on a search. But the closer she gets to the truth, the more the answers slip away.

Documentary screening in collaboration with DOK.fest – DOK.fest is the largest film festival in Germany dedicated solely to documentaries. Every year in May, the DOK.fest welcomes well over 100 films, their makers, and, if possible, some protagonists in Munich. They screen at over 20 locations throughout the city and beyond. Since 2020, there has been a digital platform too, that offers these films to be enjoyed, discussed, or binged at homes throughout Germany. Celebrating excellence in the documentary cinematic art is as important to the Dok.fest as are the discoveries, discussions, and encounters for the guests and the audiences. The Student Award of DOK.fest München presents outstanding documentary films by students of German-speaking film schools.

 Shared Session with the Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences

Location: Lothstr. 64, lecture hall „Roter Würfel“, room 1.046 or via the Zoom link with meeting-ID 947 3715 4657 and password 631726

The Lectures for Future is a public lecture series at Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences, held every semester in a hybrid format. Moderated by Prof. Dr. Christian Holler and Prof. Dr. Heinz P. Huber, it brings together researchers from Munich’s universities to explore climate change, environmental protection, and sustainability from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives.

More details on this talk will be announced soon.

Michael Hagmann is the Head of Business Strategy at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.

Prof. Iryna Doronina will present on how war-induced disruptions are reshaping energy, water, and environmental systems in Ukraine. The lecture highlights the gap between policy and implementation, showing how current recovery strategies often lack integrated scientific methodologies. Particular attention will be paid to the cascading effects of damage to energy infrastructure, including impacts on water supply, land use, and environmental stability, as well as emerging risks for long-term recovery. According to this, Prof. Doronina will introduce her science-based approach, which supports policy decision-making by linking territorial potential, resource availability, and technology integration for sustainable recovery and deployment.

Iryna Doronina is a Visiting Professor at the Chair of Energy Systems/IAS Technical University of Munich. From 2022 to 2024, she was a Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich, where she led an in-depth study on the effects of the war on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and explored renewable energy opportunities for recovery. From 2022-2023 she was an affiliated Research Fellow at Yale University (USA). Iryna Doronina specialises in developing decision-support tools and evaluating territorial potential for sustainable infrastructure and regional development. Her work focuses on the green transformation of infrastructure, the realization of sustainable potential of territories, investment facilitation, and green policy implementation. She has collaborated extensively with international organizations, including the International Energy Agency, IRENA, Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection (FOCP), European Commission (DG Energy) and took the role of an invited speaker at the OSCE, JRC EU and the World Economic Forum, and has contributed to high-level policy development on energy transition, including strategies related to industrial decarbonization and hydrogen economy development.

Tanzania’s iconic national parks, such as the Serengeti, Ngorongoro or Nyerere (Selous), are global biodiversity hotspots. As cornerstones of the country’s tourism industry they are marketed as the epitome of wild, pristine Mother Africa. Yet, their origins are deeply rooted in the violent legacies of German and British colonialism. Whether forced displacement of indigenous communities (particularly the Maasai), or the depopulation in the wake of wars like the Maji Maji Resistance: under the guise of wildlife conservation vast areas were repurposed as Naturschutzgebiete, laying the groundwork for today’s national parks.

This lecture traces the transformation of these landscapes from colonial use to modern national parks, exposing how historical injustices persist in contemporary land-use conflicts. By examining the intersection of conservation, tourism, and human rights, the talk sheds light on the ongoing struggles of the Maasai against state-led evictions and Tanzania’s conservation policies. It also explores tourism’s paradoxical role, both as a driver of environmental degradation and as a purported force for protection.

Henriette Seydel is a sociologist and conflict researcher. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Augsburg, focusing on colonial heritage tourism in Tanzania. In 2025, she published the Decolonial Travel Guide Tanzania. She also is the chairwoman of the board of the nationwide NGO Tanzania Network e.V., which engages in decolonial, anti-racist developmental education.

    Shared Session with RCE BenE München

Armed conflict threatens and harms wildlife. The legal framework protecting wildlife against such harm is fragmented and weak. International environmental law regulates the sustainable exploitation of wildlife, while international humanitarian law protects the environment only against excessive damage. In this lecture, I provide an overview of the rules and the interaction between these two principal regimes. Discussing the relation between armed conflict and wildlife trafficking, I highlight the securitization of IEL. Critical initiatives to improve implementation of the law and criminalization proposals will be discussed as well.

Dr. Veerle Platvoet is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. In 2025, she defended her PhD on wildlife law at the University of Helsinki and has a background in global environmental law. Her current research continues to focus on legal questions on animal protection and its interaction with different regimes in international law. Platvoet is a board member of the Dutch Association of Animal Rights Law, review editor at the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy and member of the Helsinki Animal Law Centre and the Multispecies Collective.

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As a Member of the European Parliament Jutta Paulus offers a personal perspective on the current developments at European level, with a focus on the impacts on environmental policy. Global wars and conflicts are shifting attention of policy makers towards short term challenges, achievements in EU environmental protection are now considered detrimental for competitiveness and the ability to deal with global crisis.  

Jutta Paulus (born 1967 in Gießen, Hessen) is a German pharmacist and politician. After studying in Marburg (1986–1990), she moved to the Palatinate, where she has lived ever since. In 1991, she co-founded a laboratory specializing in indoor pollutants and ecotoxicology, later focusing on chemical testing and EU regulatory compliance. Following two decades in management, she sold her shares in 2012 and shifted her focus to politics, while continuing to work in quality management in laboratories and hospitals. As a long-standing member of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, Paulus has held numerous roles at local, state, and federal levels, particularly in energy, ecology, and environmental policy. She served as chair of the Green Party in Rhineland-Palatinate (2017–2019) and has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019 as part of the Greens/EFA group.

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Location: Rachel Carson Center (LMU Munich), Leopoldstr. 11a – room to be announced

The accelerating climate crisis is not only reshaping ecological systems; in the Middle East, it is intensifying already fragile political, economic, and social orders. Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, water scarcity, and the degradation of arable land intersect with protracted conflicts, authoritarian governance, and deep inequalities. In this context, climate change does not simply threaten the material conditions for peace, it destabilizes the very frameworks through which peace is understood and studied. What does it mean to research peace in a region where environmental stress multiplies existing insecurities and contributes to displacement, livelihood loss, and social fragmentation? How should scholars engage with the fact that communities across the Middle East are unevenly exposed to climate impacts, often along lines shaped by colonial legacies, extractive economies, and global energy dependencies? As heat extremes intensify and water systems come under increasing strain, the Middle East becomes a critical site for rethinking the relationship between climate change and (sustainable) peace. In a region already marked by overlapping crises, the question is no longer only how to build peace, but how to conceptualize it under conditions of accelerating environmental disruption.

Christiane Fröhlich is a lead research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. Currently, she is also Acting Professor of Political Science, esp. Transnational Politics, at Helmut-Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg. She is particularly interested in the intersection between forced migration, sustainable adaptation to global environmental change, and socio-political upheaval, and in the interactions between mobility control and state making. At GIGA, she leads the research programme “Peace and Security”. Her regional focus is mainly on the Middle East (Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Turkey), where she has conducted extensive field research. She is also engaged in cross-regional comparative projects, including the DAAD-funded Climate Centre “Sustainable Adaptation to Global Change in the Middle East” (SAGE-Centre) as well as, previously, the EU-funded consortium “Migration Governance and Asylum Crises (MAGYC)“. Fröhlich holds a PhD from the Center for Conflict Studies at Marburg University, and is speaker of the German Network for Forced Migration Studies.

Nada Majdalani is a Palestinian environmental leader and the Director of EcoPeace Middle East’s Palestine Office. She holds a Master of Science in Environmental Assessment and Management from Oxford Brookes University in the UK and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg under the DAAD Research Centers Programme. Specializing in environmental management, Ms. Majdalani has held several leadership roles within international organizations, focusing on infrastructure development, water and sanitation, solid waste management, sustainable production, and technical assistance to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Her work also extends to institutional capacity building and policy advisory support. A staunch advocate for cross-border environmental cooperation, she has been instrumental in initiatives such as the Green Blue Deal for the Middle East. Ms. Majdalani has presented her work at numerous prestigious international platforms, including the UN Security Council, NATO, World Water Week, the Berlin Climate Security Conference, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), and the Brookings Institution.

ندى مجدلاني هي قيادية بيئية فلسطينية وتشغل منصب مديرة مكتب منظمة “إيكو بيس الشرق الأوسط” في فلسطين. تحمل درجة الماجستير في تقييم وإدارة البيئة من جامعة أوكسفورد بروكس في المملكة المتحدة، وهي حالياً طالبة دكتوراه في جامعة هامبورغ ضمن برنامج مراكز البحوث التابع للهيئة الألمانية للتبادل الأكاديمي (DAAD).

متخصصة في إدارة البيئة، شغلت السيدة مجدلاني عدداً من المناصب القيادية في منظمات دولية، وركزت في عملها على تطوير البنية التحتية، والمياه والصرف الصحي، وإدارة النفايات الصلبة، والإنتاج المستدام، وتقديم الدعم الفني للمؤسسات الصغيرة والمتوسطة. كما يشمل عملها بناء القدرات المؤسسية وتقديم الاستشارات في مجال السياسات العامة.

تُعد السيدة مجدلاني من المدافعين البارزين عن التعاون البيئي عبر الحدود، ولعبت دوراً محورياً في مبادرات مثل “الاتفاق الأخضر الأزرق للشرق الأوسط”. وقد قدمت أعمالها في العديد من المنصات الدولية المرموقة، بما في ذلك مجلس الأمن التابع للأمم المتحدة، وحلف الناتو، وأسبوع المياه العالمي، ومؤتمر برلين لأمن المناخ، ومعهد الولايات المتحدة للسلام (USIP)، ومؤسسة بروكينغز.

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The lecture highlights the multifaceted challenges supply chains face today. It juxtaposes the promise of value creation and prosperity with the acute reality of worker exploitation and environmental harm. It explores the interconnected relationships of supply chains with political problems, social crises, and the depreciation of natural resources. The lecture concludes by sketching some ways out of the crisis.

Since 2025 Prof. Stefan Gold has been Chair of Sustainability Management at TUMCS. He was previously Professor of Corporate Sustainability at the University of Kassel (2017-2025) and Assistant Professor at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR) at the University of Nottingham (UK) (2014-2016). After completing his PhD at the University of Kassel in 2011, he was a Postdoc at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). He studied International Business and Cultural Studies at the University of Passau (1997-2003).

His research in the field of sustainability management is interdisciplinary and focuses on the social dimension of sustainability. In particular, it addresses the question of how sustainability transformation should be shaped and implemented in economy and society. His research focuses on modern slavery and decent work, circular economy, sustainable supply chain management, and sustainability in humanitarian aid.