Biology, Ecology, Geography

Amelie grew up in Sydney and Germany and was Post-doctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer of economic geography at the Institute of Geography/University of Cologne in 2013-2019. Her PhD (also at Cologne) dealt with global standards, quality and risk management in organic food imports to Germany and Australia. While her dedication to Australian Studies is ongoing, her more recent research focuses on socio-economic analyses around small-scale-farming, land-use change and food security in coastal Bangladesh and India. She has also been Chair of the Association for Australian Studies (Gesellschaft für Australienstudien e.V.) 2014-2017.

His research focuses on urban and regional development, sustainability, resilience and innovation. His current projects Urban Resilience In Action and Gippsland Smart Specialization Strategy are both focused on applicable solutions, cross-sectoral cooperation and place-based innovation.

Sebastian received his PhD in Human Geography at the University of Cologne, where he was also awarded with a Fellowship Grant for doctoral students at the Graduate School of Geosciences (GSGS). His work has been published in international high-ranked journals and is attracting interest from international organizations and media.

Click here for his homepage.

He has published extensively on urban development and economic change in Australia. His further research interests include social and economic aspects of climate change, natural hazards and environmental management in regions such as Western Europe, Australia and South/South East Asia.

His current research projects include DFG, ATN and DAAD funded studies on airport development and urban land use change both in Australia and other parts of the world.

In her PhD (The University of Sydney, 2010), she investigated the effects of grazing on flora and fauna in central Australia. The following four years, she spent investigating the role of feral cats in the dramatic small mammal declines in northern Australia, first at James Cook University, then the University of Tasmania, based for fieldwork for almost two years in Darwin, Northern Territory. After a citizen science project on the impacts of cats and dogs on backyard wildlife in Hobart, Tasmania, she returned for some postdoctoral work at the Botanical Institute at the University of Cologne. Here, she studied grazing impacts in South Africa and urban ecology right in the city of Cologne. Before returning to Australia at the end of 2019, she worked as a postdoc in Sustainability at the Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Bonn. After working at the herbarium of The University of Sydney, teaching students in statistics, biology, conservation, wildlife management and ecology, and working simultaneously as a senior researcher for the Desert Ecology Research Group (both also at The University of Sydney), she briefly returned as an ecologist to her PhD study sites in the Simpson Desert, Queensland. She currently works as a wildlife ecology lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW. Dr. Frank is collaborating closely with Prof. Adone and team.