Prof. Dr. Bettina König

Prof. Dr Bettina König has been Head of the Section of "Sustainability Management in the International Food Industry" at the Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences at the University of Kassel since April 2023.
The agricultural scientist was previously a research group leader at the Humboldt University in Berlin and a project leader at the University for Sustainable Development in Eberswalde. She contributed to establishing interdisciplinary institutes at both universities - the IRI THESys (Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems) and the Research Centre Sustainability-Transformation-Transfer.
She received her doctorate at the Humboldt University in Berlin on "Obstacles to the conversion of vegetable farms to organic farming methods" and subsequently conducted interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on sustainability innovations in national and international contexts at various stations.

For journals

Reviewer for journals: Research Policy, Journal of Cleaner Production, S&TS, EIST, Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, Environmental Science and Policy, Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, Food Security, Sustainability Management Forum, GEWISOLA, IFSA , IST, Methodenhandbuch Baden-Württemberg Labs [eds.] Defila, R., DiGiulio, A., Transdisciplinary Research and Sustainability: Collaboration, Innovation and Transformation [eds.] Padmanabhan, M., Routledge Food Systems

For research funders

Austrian Academy of Sciences, CAS-nwo, Swiss National Fund, EU PRIMA Farming Systems

In (non)scientific committees, societies

Scientific Advisory Board Spreewald Biosphere Reserve (since 2022)

Appointed member of the Academy for Spatial Development in the Leibniz Association (since 2025)

Appointed member of the Advisory Board of the International Academy for Nature Conservation Insel Vilm (INA) (since 2025)

Member of the Society for Transdisciplinary and Participatory Research (GTPF) (since 2023)

Member Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity

Member Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN), Thematic Group Agri-Food Transitions

At the Department of Organic Agricultural Sciences

Since 2026 Structural Plan Commission for Faculty 11

Since 01/2024 Admission Board IFBC

Summer semester 2024 comm. Head of degree program IFBC

Since 07/2024 Erasmus Representative for Faculty 11

Since 10/2025 Faculty Council

Sustainable production and consumption, management of integrative innovation processes; management of value chains and production networks; management of inter- and transdisciplinary research processes; interorganisational and intersectoral sustainability management; sustainability management of different types of organisations, spatial aspects of sustainability management and regional development.

• Researchgate
• Google Scholar Citations

Prof. Dr. Bettina König was involved in teaching on management topics in the food sector at the former Department of Economics of Horticultural Production at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for a number of degree programmes, including Horticultural Sciences (M.Sc.), Agricultural Economics (M.Sc.), Integrated Natural Resource Management (M.Sc.). Currently, teaching takes place in the degree programmes International Food Business and Consumer Studies (M.Sc.), Sustainable International Agriculture (M.Sc.), Ecological Agriculture (B.Sc.), Sustainable Economics (M.Sc.) and from winter semester 2023/24 in the degree programme Agriculture, Ecology and Society (M.Sc.).

At IRI THESys, she has helped set up and run interdisciplinary research based team-teaching formats, in particular the Sustainability and Global Justice thematic class (best practice collection of the Hoch N network "Best Practice - examples of success from teaching, operations, governance and research" in 2018) as well as science-art teaching formats. She is also involved in capacity building initiatives for inter- and transdisciplinary researchers, in particular the Postdoc Academy for Transfromational Leadership.

Several supervised theses have been awarded, including the IRI THESys Award for very good interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theses (7), the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Award for outstanding Thaer Institute degrees, the Gunter Wolf Award of the HNEE for the best thesis (1) and nominated for the Sustainability Award of the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna, Austria (BOKU).