The research cluster Social-Ecological Transformations and Gender Relations examines the interplay between production and reproduction as well as the tension between democracy and property. It focuses on the transformative potential of conflicts, social movements and the distribution of resources. The most important research topics of the cluster are collective property, ecofeminism and the commons, gender and work, house-holding, queer sustainabilities and environmental intersectional justice.
The topic of collective property deals with the question of how decisions are made about the use and distribution of basic resources such as housing, land and water. Ecofeminism and Commons examines sustainable and communal use practices, using queer and postcolonial theories as a basis. In the context of gender and work, socio-ecological transformations of production and reproduction processes are analyzed, especially in the context of trade unions and intersectional movements. In the field of home-keeping, the researchers focus on reproductive work and its historical development as well as its representation in literature. Queer Sustainabilities expands the concept of sustainability by including subjective experiences and representations of marginalized people, while Environmental Intersectional Justice looks at these issues on a structural level.