Franziska Ehnert is a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, where she works at the Department Sustainability Transitions in Cities and Regions. In her research, Franziska studies urban transitions towards sustainability. She analyses how they can be governed, exploring governance instruments to initiate, accelerate and consolidate transitions in urban settings. By examining participatory governance for urban transitions, she seeks to study new forms of governance to empower citizens to co-create their cities and local communities. This research subject implies a shift in research methodology. In her study of participatory governance, she seeks to combine citizen participation with transdisciplinary research and experimentation. Through this collaborative experimentation with citizens, she explores new processes of knowledge co-production for societal change towards sustainability.
Franziska earned her PhD in political science from the University of Potsdam, Germany. In her PhD research, she examined ideas, discourses and institutions in climate policy, seeking to open a new dialogue between scholars of policy analysis and public administration. She studied political science, economics and Slavonic studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany, and the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany.