Dr. Rieke Hansen took over the professorship for open space planning on October 1. She studied landscape and open space planning at Leibniz Universität Hannover and completed a traineeship in landscape conservation in North Rhine-Westphalia. She then worked in research and teaching at the Technical University of Munich and RWTH Aachen University and completed her doctorate on the planning concept of "green infrastructure" in 2018. For the last six years, she has been a tenure-track professor for open space planning and ecological urban development at Geisenheim University. She is a registered landscape architect with the Chamber of Architects and Town Planners of Hesse and a member of the "Scientific Advisory Board for Natural Climate Protection".

At the University of Kassel, she heads the Department of Open Space Planning and plans to conduct research into the further development of open space planning and governance. In particular, this involves questions relating to the planning and design of urban green and open spaces in the context of sustainable urban development and possible contributions of open space planning to socio-ecological transformation processes.