Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jacqueline Lorenzen will be focusing her research at the University of Bonn on legal issues connected with sustainable urban development. “Because cities are responsible for much of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions as well as being especially vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, they are key actors in the context of the necessary transformation processes,” she says. Various new tools and concepts for mastering these processes are being discussed in spatial planning circles, including the “vertical city,” the “sponge city” and the “resilient city.” Jacqueline Lorenzen is studying these concepts from the perspective of administrative law and administrative science.
Researching across discipline boundaries
The Argelander professorships for early-career researchers (named after the Bonn-based astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander, 1799–1875) are geared toward expanding the research profile of the University’s six TRAs, where researchers work together to tackle issues of great relevance to the future across subject and faculty boundaries. Lorenzen’s professorship is based in the Individuals, Institutions and Societies Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA Individuals and Societies).
“Professor Lorenzen is working at the interface between law, economics and the social sciences,” explain Prof. Dr. André Beauducel and Prof. Dr. Hans-Martin von Gaudecker, the TRA’s two Speakers. “This puts her in an ideal position—not least in partnership with our first Argelander Professor of Economics—to link the two departments in the Faculty of Law and Economics together with each other and with other fields covered by the TRA Individuals and Societies.”
Legal expert and political scientist Prof. Dr. Dr. Wolfgang Durner adds: “We’re delighted to have the opportunity to welcome Professor Lorenzen to the TRA. In particular, her interest in questions of climate protection law and green energy law and in researching the legal framework for sustainable urban development offers some promising starting points for further inter- and transdisciplinary work in many respects.”
Studying the law of climate protection and green energy
Besides her new area of focus, Jacqueline Lorenzen will also be continuing her existing research into the infiltration of climate protection and green energy law by dogma and theory. “We are seeing numerous highly topical, fast-paced developments and new kinds of specific questions emerging in this area,” she says.
She is also exploring constitutional issues of sustainability in the light of concepts taken from environmental science such as the “Anthropocene” and “planetary boundaries.” Says Lorenzen: “With the environmental transformation increasingly becoming a challenge of social sustainability as well, we’ll also be turning our attention more toward tackling problems associated with the intra- and intergenerational equality of burdens and distributive justice in the future.” She and her team will be working closely with other researchers from the TRA Individuals and Societies to this end.
Something that Jacqueline Lorenzen sees as especially important is embedding key sustainability issues in teaching, to which her lecture on “The Law of Sustainability” and (interdisciplinary) seminars on topics such as sustainable urban development are intended to contribute.