At present, I work as a Research associate and doctoral candidate at the Department of Geography/Human Geography Group of the Faculty of Mathematics and Geography at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. In my ongoing doctoral thesis, I conduct field research on animal geography and investigate questions concerning the relationship, especially conflicting interests between humans and wild animals. Thus, I am studying how humans perceive and react to the (new) presence or re-appearance of specific wild animals considered as "dangerous" in their immediate surroundings and own areas of living/habitats, what kind of conflicts may be provoked and arise by this fact, and how mutual coexistence of wild and domesticated farm animals and human beings can be acchieved. My primary research interests and foci therefore are:
- Animal geography/more-than-human geography with a special focus on the Alps (especially Austria, Germany, Switzerland) or mountainous regions across Europe in general
- Coexistence and wild animal management and protection
- Human–environment relations research with a focus on sustainable regional development and corporate regional responsibility
I am committed to substantially contribute to a research proposal addressing Topic 3: Animal Health and Welfare and Society, in particular to issues of animal welfare in connection with its effects on farmers, producers and consumers.
In a potential collaborative research project, I could collect representative survey data using qualitative social science and research methods or expand the theoretical discussion framework with regard to non-dualistic perspectives or questions of "multispecies justice". For further information, please refer to my personal website: www.ku.de/en/the-ku/faculties/mgf/geography/human-geography/staff/verena-schroeder.

The Geography department of the KUEI offers specializations in areas of human geography (cultural and economic geography) and tourism, as well as physical geography and environmental geography. In addition to Bachelor’s degree programs in geography, it runs Master’s programs that allow students to specialize in tourism and regional planning or natural hazards and environmental processes. The faculty plays a key role in training teachers of mathematics, geography, and biology, and also offers an interdisciplinary Master’s degree program in education for sustainable development. Dynamic teaching, international connections, excellent supervision, and strong commitment to exciting research topics make the Faculty of Mathematics and Geography unique.
The research work of the Human Geography Group focuses on questions of social relations with nature and sustainable development, which we examine from the perspective of an integrative, non-dualistic human-world research (Steiner 2014). According to this approach, truth, theory and practice must be understood as a unity mediated in experience, whereby the classical, dichotomous division between socio-cultural and material proves to be invalid. Instead, the human being and the environment are understood as a holistic and permanently dynamically changing unity of the physical-material, the corporeal, the cognitive, the emotional, the psychological and the social. In it, stability can only exist temporarily, since individual events entail a reflexive change of the whole. A stability- or equilibrium-oriented, anthropocentric concept of the environment is replaced by the idea of a milieu that is processually interwoven with the human being, in which and through which the human being co-exists alongside the other elements of his or her world. The environment becomes a permanently changing holistically conceived co-world. Such a changed perspective conceptually implies an equal unity of human beings and the co-world and thus offers a reason for a changed ethical and practical approach of human beings to their co-world, in which perspectives of sustainable development take on a special significance.