Dr. Wera Wojtkiewicz

Wera Wojtkiewicz joined the institute in 2016, initially as a research assistant to the scientific director, Mark Lawrence. In this role, she was responsible for coordinating a wide range of operational and strategic activities and also contributed to core processes in the areas of third-party funding, science cooperation, and internal sustainability management. From 2021 to 2023, she served as a scientific advisor to Prof Dr Ortwin Renn for the steering committee of the German government's "Science Platform on Climate Protection". In 2022, she was assigned to a role within the institute's newly established Strategic Science Management unit.

Prior to joining the RIFS, Wera Wojtkiewicz served as a project manager at a consultancy for environmental policy and sustainability, where she coordinated internal and external procurements processes and strategic business development activities. Wera Wojtkiewicz has also worked as a research assistant at the Technical University of Berlin and co-organised several workshops and conferences on landscape planning as an instrument of nature conservation in Russia, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Wera Wojtkiewicz studied Social Geography, Eastern European Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Leipzig and in Irkutsk/Russia, and graduated with distinction. In her PhD thesis, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), she analysed economic and socio-cultural concepts of nature and landscape.