Team

Gernot Klepper is a Senior Researcher at the Kiel Institute. He has been for many years Head of the Research Center “The Environment and Natural Resources” at the IfW and Speaker of the Kiel Earth Institute. An economist by training (University of Heidelberg), he received a Ph.D. in Agricultural  Economics (University of Kentucky, USA). His research interests center on climate mitigation with a focus on modeling and analyzing the impact of climate policy instruments. Especially, the role of natural resources such as land and water in the climate system and their contribution to climate change as well as mitigation are among his research topics.

He has coordinated the first phase of the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change under the BMBF funding measure Economics of Climate Change. Previously, he was Chairman of the National Committee on Global Change Research of the German Research Foundation (DFG), Co-chair of the German Climate Consortium (DKK) and a research fellow of the CEPR. Currently, he is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and Chairman of the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification Association (ISCC e.V.), among others.

Lena-K. Bednarz is a research associate at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy Research Center “Global Commons and Climate Policy“. Alongside Gernot Klepper, she coordinated the first phase of the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change from 2014 to 2018. Back from her parental leave since early 2020, she contributes to shaping the thematic concept and the practical coordination in the second phase of the dialogue.

She came to Kiel after finishing her degree in economics at the University of Göttingen. She was research assistant, PhD student and coordinator of bachelor´s and master´s programs at the Department of Economics of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences. In 2013, she completed her PhD thesis in the field of resource economics and has been working at the Kiel Institute ever since.

Christine Merk is a senior researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in the Research Center “Global Commons and Climate Policy“ and “Social and Behavioral Approaches to Global Problems“. Since 2019 she has also been part of the coordination team of the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change where she mainly contributes to shaping the Dialogue’s thematic concept.

In her research, she looks at laypersons’ acceptance of climate action, CCS, negative emission technologies, and solar radiation management; a particular interest is the occurrence of moral-hazard behavior in individuals. She conducts revealed-preference experiments integrating concepts from the psychology of risk perception to learn more about individuals’ perceptions of and reactions to climate engineering. In May 2018 she was a visiting scholar at Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program. Furthermore, she researches the effects of nudging interventions on climate-friendly meal choices in field experiments. More about Christine's research

Her background is in policy analysis and administration science (University of Konstanz and Rutgers University), and she holds a PhD (2016) in Economics from Kiel University.

Franziska Weeger supports the coordination of the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change as project manager .

She completed Master studies in "Sustainability, Society and the Environment" (M.Sc.) as well as "Practical Philosophy of the Economy and the Environment" (M.A.) at Kiel University. Before, she studied "International Business and Technology" (B.Eng.) at the University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg.

Before joining the team she worked in the department Economic Geography at Kiel University and interned at the United Nations Office for Sustainable Development (UNOSD) in Incheon, South Korea. In 2014 she coordinated a Hospital Waste Management Project in Banjhakateri,  Nepal for the NGO Technology without Borders.

Defne Akin has been supporting the project team as a research assistant since October 2019 and since May 2022 as a permanent employee in the area of media and communications work. Her responsibilities are mainly in the area of editorial, design and communication work as well as supporting the organization and realization of events.

She studied sociology and German at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. In addition to her studies, she worked for several years in the publishing industry and at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Kiel. She is particularly interested in the field of science communication as well as the engagement surrounding the issues of sustainability and climate protection.

Malte Endler joined the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change in January 2022 as a research assistant. He helps the team with the preparation of climate economics events, research tasks and website maintenance.

He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and is now studying in the master's degree Sustainability, Society and the Environment at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel focusing on municipal climate policy and sustainability discourses.