Benno Werlen, born 1952 in Switzerland, holds the UNESCO Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability (www.unesco.uni-jena.de), the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art & Sciences and the Max Weber Center for Cultural and Social Studies, a member of and Section Chair at the Academia Europaea for ‘Human Mobility, Governance, Environment and Space’, chair of the IGU Commission on Global Understanding, is the Founder and Chair of The Jena Declaration on the Cultural and Regional Dimension of Global Sustainability’, Initiator and Executive Director of the International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) (www.global-understanding.info) including some 40 Regional Actions Centers, approved by the UNESCO General Conference, proclaimed by the three major science councils of the Human (CIPSH), Social (ISSC) and Natural Sciences (ICSU).
The long standing experience with the cooperation between engaged citizens, politicians, social and natural scientists as well as scholars of the humanities in a bottom-up approach is the focal point of his research, institutional and civic engagement as founder and holder of UNESCO Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability and most recently of The Jena Declaration (www.thejenadeclaration.org), founded in cooperation with the Canadian and German Commissions for UNESCO, The Club of Rome, the World Academy of Art and Science as well as the International Geographical Union, partners form the International Science Council (ISC) and Academia Europaea, endorsed by many international science unions and academic organizations, as well as by more than 1000 signatories from over 100 countries of all Continents, more than 200 institutional supporters and so far about 40 project partners from science, the arts and civil society from all over the world.
In 2016 Werlen was awarded the Lauréat d’honneur of the International Geographical Union, the highest scientific honorary prize by the IGU, for his lifelong contributions to geographical science, as an internationally recognized scholar, and for opening new paths of scientific cooperation at the highest level. Until 2018 he was the Chair for Social Geography at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Dr. Werlen holds degrees from the Faculties of the Humanities, and Natural Sciences. He worked at the Universities of Kiel, Fribourg, Zurich, Salzburg, Geneva, Nijmegen, and the ETH Zurich. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (King’s College & Sidney Sussex College), the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a ‘key thinker on space and place’ (Sage 2011), he published widely on society-space relations under globalized conditions.
He served as a panel member for the European Research Council for ‘Environment and Society’ for Advanced Grants (2008-15), the French National Research Agency (ANR) in the field of Social and Human Sciences (2008-12), as Chair of the IGU Commission ‘Cultural Approach in Geography’ (2004-16), as a Member of Council of the World Cultural Forum (Taihu, China) (since June 2016), and most recently – invited UNEP in partnership with Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) and the International Science Council (ISC) – participant of the Europe regional foresight workshop to establish an institutionalized approach to foresight and horizon scanning for future UN sustainability policies. He has published 17 books and more than 200 papers in scientific journals and books and has given more than 400 keynote presentations at universities and conferences across five continents in the fields of geography, sociology, economics, political sciences, philosophy, history, cultural anthropology, environmental sciences, linguistics etc., and organized about 100 scientific conferences and conference sessions on all continents.
