Marina Fischer-Kowalski

Marina Fischer-Kowalski (born 1946) is an Austrian sociologist and social ecologist and a professor emeritus of the University of Klagenfurt, currently teaching at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, the University of Klagenfurt and the University of Vienna. She is known for founding the Vienna School of Social Ecology and for her pioneering work on the widely used metric for material and energy flows to complement economic accounting. Fischer-Kowalski works on socio-environmental change, sustainable development and the Anthropocene. Education Fischer-Kowalski was born 1946 in Vienna as the daughter of the political activist Ruth von Mayenburg and the politician and writer Ernst Fischer. She received her PhD in sociology at the University of Vienna in 1971 and a postgraduate degree in social sciences from the Institute for Advanced Studies in 1973. In 1985, Fischer-Kowalski was awarded the habilitation in sociology at the University of Graz. Career Fischer-Kowalski was assistant professor in sociology at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna (1972–84) and Austrian delegate to and consultant of OECD in Paris, working on comparative studies between countries for quality of life, social inequality and gender. In 1986, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Austrian Universities (IFF), later a faculty of the University of Klagenfurt, called her to found an Institute for Social Ecology, which she directed from 1987 until 2014. Fischer-Kowalski taught as a visiting professor at the University Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (2003), Yale University, USA (2002), Roskilde University, Denmark (1997), at Griffith University, Australia (1996) and the London School of Economics (1992). Currently she is senior researcher at the Institute for Social Ecology, University for Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna.