Merle-Marie Emely Johannsen

In her doctoral research, Merle-Marie Johannsen focuses on questions of societal acceptance of renewable energy technologies and the infrastructures associated with them. Her research  aims  to quantitatively capture and analyze regional differences in acceptance across Germany. Based on these findings, she develops—using qualitative methods—a context-sensitive governance instrument that enables early-stage and needs-oriented citizen engagement in energy transition planning processes. Through her work, she seeks to contribute to a more socially just, context-sensitive, and sustainable design of transformation processes. Her research is supervised by Prof. Dr. Nicolas Jaeger at the Chair of Environmental Governance at TU Berlin.

She completed her master’s degree in Environmental Planning at TU Berlin, where she also worked as a student research assistant with teaching responsibilities at the Chair of Environmental Governance. In addition, she was involved in the  project “Democratic Environmental Protection and Counter-Strategies Against Right-Wing Extremism” funded by the Heidehof Foundation, where she researched political influence, democracy-promoting environmental communication, and actor constellations within the environmental sector.