1st Cohort 2008 - 2010
Demographic Change and Regional Development Strategies

Aim of dissertation projects of the first cohort of the DLGS is to increase the understanding for demographic change. This research is intended to make a contribution to further development of strategies for coping with demographic change in Germany and other European countries.

Dissertation projects of the first cohort deal with the fact that success and failure of strategies for demographic change depend on regional and local actors as well as stakeholders on district level. 

2nd Cohort 2010 - 2012
Dealing with Change - Regional Strategies in Time of Demographic, Climate and Economic Change

The second cohort will pursue the thematic focus of the first cohort, but will pay more attention to embedding demographic change in other context conditions e.g. climate change or economic change.  

3rd Cohort 2012 - 2014
Urban and Regional Resilience - Managing Change for Sustainable Urban and Regional Development

The third DLGS cohort is oriented towards urban and regional resilience. Doctoral candidates focus on new concepts for managing change for sustainable urban and regional development. The following description of research lines was announced:

Resilience can broadly be defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks (Walker, Holling, Carpenter, and Kinzig, 2004). “To be resilient” refers to something positive: to be able to withstand hardship and disturbance, to recover from disaster and destruction, to regain one’s original shape after deformation, to be cautious enough to prepare for the unforeseen, and to deal with risks in an “appropriate” way.

However, urban and regional resilience cannot be confined to socio-ecological systems, but must also be understood in a broader sense. It is not limited to natural hazards, risk reduction, climate change and more effective responses to them; it also includes strategies to prevent and recover from urban and regional distress and decline, and to cope with new social and economic challenges.

On this background, DLGS 3 is focussing on resilience. Doctoral theses are to contribute on the theoretical discussion, to methodological issues, and to the analysis of empirical cases of resilience. Special attention is to be given to the management of change in order to achieve more sustainable urban and regional development. Examples will be selected worldwide. They are related to sudden negative or positive shocks, as well as to “slow burns”, i.e. “creeping” changes which over the years may lead to complete structural transformation.