Since 2014
Professor in Human Geography at the Institute of Geography at the University of Cologne. He was appointed within the framework of the key profile area “Socio-economic, Cultural, and Political Transformations in the Global South” at the University of Cologne, supported by the German Excellence Initiative

2006 - 2014
Professor in Economic Geography at the Institute for Economic and Cultural Geography, University of Hannover

2002 - 2006
Professor at the Geography Institute at the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel

2001
Habilitation: Firm’s innovation behaviour and spatial proximity – The importance of cooperation networks in the Metropolitan Innovationssystems of Barcelona, Stockholm and Vienna, University of Hanover (in German)

1995
PhD: Transformation in Vietnam: Industrial change and regional consequences, University of Hanover (in German)

1991
Diploma thesis: Regional Impact of the World Exhibition 1992 in Sevilla, University of Hannover (in German)

Laufzeit: 2024 – 2027
Förderung durch: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
Leitung: Prof. Dr. Javier Revilla Diez
Bearbeiterinnen: Dr. Sören Scholvin, Emma Galbraith

Research Team: Prof. Dr. Javier Revilla Diez, Prof. Dr. Peter Dannenberg,
Gideon Tups (M.Sc.), Victoria Luxen (M.Sc), Mfundo Mlilo (M.Sc.)
Collaboration Partners:
Dr. Godfrey Tawodzera, Jim Kairu, Fenny Nakanyete, University of Namibia
Dr. Enock Sakala, Agness Chinyama, University of Zambia, Zambia
Dr. Richard Mbunda, Edith Benedict, University of Dar-es-Salaam University,
Tanzania, Dr. Mosses Ndunguru, Mzumbe University, Tanzania

Duration: 2022-2025

Funding: DFG

Laufzeit: 2024 – 2027
Förderung durch: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

Leitung: Prof. Dr. Javier Revilla Diez

The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) is a research conglomerate funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It aims at understanding African futures and how they are “made” in rural areas by investigating land-use change and social-ecological transformation. The Universities of Bonn and Cologne (UoC) have a track record of collaborations in this regional and thematic field of interest, combining complementary expertise from a wide range of disciplines in natural and social sciences. “Future-making” refers to physical changes as well as social practices that shape future conditions by making the future an issue in the present. 

The first funding phase of the CRC focused on the two seemingly opposite, yet often mutually constitutive processes of agricultural intensification and conservation. This focus is widened in the current phase to include infrastructuring as a third essential process. With infrastructuring we refer to the establishment of large-scale infrastructure, which we consider as an additional driver of land-use change and social-ecological transformation. All three processes – intensification, conservation, and infrastructuring – contribute, in often overlapping dynamics, to grand-scale transformations in our research areas with multiple micro-scalar repercussions. The CRC conceptualizes such processes of social-ecological transformation as expressions of “future-making”. This builds on the hypothesis that imagined futures and the different ideas about how they can be realized have a decisive impact on current land-use dynamics. The projects of the CRC analyse how different approaches to the future, and also surprises and unintended side-effects, inform the politics and practices of large-scale land-use change, and how they relate to each other.

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Cooperation Partners: University of Bonn, Dep. of Geography

Website: crc-trr228.de

Duration: 2nd Funding Phase: 2022-2025 (4 years)

Description:
Growth corridors are one again gaining attention as possible avenues of future development in sub-Saharan Africa. Multi-stakeholder initiatives integrate rural areas into global value chains in order to achieve socio-economic development. Critics argue, however, that growth corridors intensify social conflicts, external dependencies, land grabs, and the maldistribution of wealth.

Support:
DFG

Duration:
2018 - 2021