News Archive

Heike Mayer and Michela Lazzeroni published the book A Research Agenda for Small and Medium-Sized Towns. The contributing authors highlight new insights and approaches to studying small and medium-sized towns, moving beyond the ‘urban bias’ to provide nuanced thought on these spaces both in terms of their relation to larger cities, and in terms of implications related to their size. The book is open access and can be read here.
 

Heike Mayer has been elected by the Cantonal Government as the new Vice Rector on the University Executive Board. She will take office on August 1, 2023.
More information in the media release.
 

Prof. Dr. Adrien Mestrot has been nominated by Switzerland to be a member of the Open Ended Scientific Group (OESG) of the Minamata Convention. This convention is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury. The role of the OESG is to develop a scientific report in which it will compile, analyse and synthesize comparable mercury monitoring data on changes in mercury concentrations in environmental media, biotic media and the human population, including vulnerable populations over time. The report will also include the availability of scientific information on mercury levels in the environment and human populations, and the interactions between scientific data and financial assistance, technology transfer, and capacity building. Finally it will contain an evaluation of the impact on mercury levels in the environment and humans of the measures taken under the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
 

New publication by Andrea Kölbel, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka andSusan Thieme.

Kölbel, Andrea; Pfaff-Czarnecka, Joanna; Thieme, Susan (Hg.) (2022). Universities as Transformative Social Spaces. Mobilities and Mobilizations from South Asian Perspectives. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

If you are interested in the publication, please contact Susan Thieme.
 

Urban climate research at the GIUB is once again making headlines, demonstrating the scientific, political, and social relevance of the topic: On the one hand, as a prominent feature in the University of Bern's Annual Report 2021 [Link] and, on the other hand, in the form of an interview with Dr. Moritz Gubler in the Bund on the occasion of the launch of the “Stadtklima-Initiative” on Ansermetplatz.
 

Temperature reconstructions for the cold season based on freezing and thawing data from rivers and the observation of plants show the extent of warming over the past 300 years. Reconstruction show that northern mid-latitudes have warmed by three degrees. The new data also allow a better analysis of climate mechanisms. Particularly, the point to the important role of snow cover. These are the results of a study by the Climatology Group published today in “Nature Communications”.