Academics with an outstanding worldwide credibility in the field of sustainable advancement and who can show comprehensive experience in transferring clinical findings from research study to society are welcomed to apply. Here, the focus needs to rest on elements of the social sciences or humanities that consist of subject areas such as sociology, economics or cultural research studies. TU Dortmund University will host the professorship, which will overarch all departments and make money from a broad network of thematically related professorships in the Ruhr region.
By calling the professorship after Klaus Töpfer, who as a leading politician from North Rhine-Westphalia rendered exceptional services at both national and global level to ecological and environment security as well as social and financial justice, the UA Ruhr partners are acknowledging his dedication. As Federal Minister for the Environment from 1987 to 1994 throughout the time of the Bundestag in Bonn, he was responsible, for instance, for presenting the restriction on CFCs, the Green Dot and Short Article 20a of the Basic Law on the security of the natural structures of life and animals. From 1998 to 2006, he was Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya. From 2009 to 2015, Klaus Töpfer, who held a PhD in economics, was the Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, which is now part of the Helmholtz Association. Amongst his lots of roles in an honorary capability, he was likewise a member of the board of directors of Welthungerhilfe from 2008 to 2012, among the largest personal help agencies in Germany, and for around four years (2013-2018) he chaired the “Agora Council for Germany” of the Agora Energiewende, which runs as a think tank. Töpfer’s home remained the Westphalian town of Höxter, where he had invested his academic year after running away Silesia in the consequences of The second world war. In 2019, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia awarded him the State Prize for his “years of exceptional dedication to the preservation of Development”. Klaus Töpfer died, aged 85, on 8 June 2024.