Professor Dr Henrike Rau (Female) is Professor (W2) of Social Geography and Sustainability in the Geography Department at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU), Germany. Her research focuses on socio-cultural, political and spatial aspects of (un)sustainable consumption, especially regarding energy, transport and food. Henrike’s other areas of expertise include environmental sociology, social-scientific and interdisciplinary sustainability research and cross-cultural comparative studies. She is particularly interested in linkages between time use and energy practices within households.
Henrike’s research endeavours to date have balanced high-quality scholarly work with problem-focused empirical research. She has made internationally recognised contributions to the conceptual and methodological advancement of social-scientific sustainability research, especially regarding: 1) the critical application of the mobilities paradigm in environmental sociology, 2) the need for time-sensitive modes of inquiry, including an explicit focus on the development of everyday consumption practices across the life course, and 3) methodological innovation in the social-scientific investigation of sustainability. From 2009 until 2015, Henrike lead research on transport, mobilities and the ‘consumption of distance’ as part of CONSENSUS (www.consensus.ie). This seven-year project investigated sustainable consumption issues across the island of Ireland, focusing in particular on everyday practices and their resource impacts. Most recently, she joined the nZeb-Retrofit research team (http://jamiegoggins.wix.com/nzeb-retrofit), collaborating with engineers and architects to research householders’ energy practices before, during and after energy retrofitting measures. Henrike’s publications to date include three books with leading publishers, including 'Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences' (Sage, 2013) and 'Challenging Consumption' (Routledge, 2014), as well as 32 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
Henrike is part of the steering committee of SCORAI Europe, a platform dedicated to sustainable consumption research and action. She is an academic with a proven track record of conducting high-quality sustainable consumption research. Given her extensive research experience in different academic and non-academic contexts and across disciplines in the natural and social sciences and engineering, Henrike will lead WP1 which develops the theoretical and conceptual framework for ENERGISE.