Institute for Social Ecology
Alpen Adria Universität

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Marina Fischer-Kowalski founded and was long-term director of the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna, where she teaches as professor of the Alpen Adria University. Her background is in sociology (Ph.D. at Vienna University). She has taught at Griffith (Australia), Roskilde (Denmark), Yale University (USA) and the Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). She was president of the International Society of Industrial Ecology, and currently she is President of the International Society for Ecological Economics. As expert member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel, she became lead author to its publication, “Decoupling resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth” (2011). She is interested in social metabolism across history, on global, national and local scales, and investigates how it relates to social dynamics (quality of life, equity, division and quality of labour, time use) and to environmental change. She works on transitions in complex systems and engages in transdisciplinary sustainability research. She has published about 300 articles, and her most recent books are on Socioecological transitions and global change: trajectories of social metabolism and land use. Cheltenham: Elgar (2007) and Ester Boserup’s Legacy on Sustainability. Springer (2014).