Dr. Anna M. Hersperger, head of the Land Change Science group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL, will become a member of the WSL’s Directorate on 1 June 2019. The appointment was made at the meeting of the ETH Board on 6/7 March at the request of the WSL Director Konrad Steffen.
For the first time, the WSL’s directorate is extended to include a woman. Anna M. Hersperger has been a researcher at WSL since 2002. She studied cultural engineering and surveying at ETH Zürich and received her doctorate from Harvard University in 2000 with a joint degree in ecology and landscape architecture. She previously worked as an engineer at Emch and Berger from 1989-1991 and was a Fulbright Scholar at Arizona State University from 1992-1994. After completing her doctorate, she did postdoctoral research at the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences at ETH Zurich from 2001 to 2002.
The spatial planning expert and landscape ecologist examines the actors and driving forces behind land use change in urban and rural areas. The possibilities for controlling these processes are of central interest both for basic research and for spatial and landscape planning practice, for example in combating urban sprawl. Her current main project „CONCUR – From Plans to Land Change” is funded by an SNSF Consolidator Grant. Anna M. Hersperger and her team are working on a better understanding of the strategic spatial planning processes in European metropolitan regions and on the integration of spatial planning into a model for the transformation of urban regions. Anna M. Hersperger is active in various international panels, for example in the field of spatial planning evaluations.
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