Dr. Franziska Gaede / Postdoctoral Fellow

Research interests

Agroforestry – Teaching, Research, and building Networks

My positon offers the opportunity to establish teaching modules in the field of agroforestry for Bachelor and Master courses for forestry and agricultural science students. It is funded by the Eva Mayr-Stihl foundation from 2023-2026 and in collaboration with Prof. Edzo Veldkamp and Dr. Marife D. Corre.
I am a Geoecologist and recently handed in my doctoral thesis in the field of Agroforestry at the Section “Social Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems” at the Department of Organic Agricultural Sciences at Kassel University. With my partner Hendrik Gaede, we run the tree nursery WurzelWerk, work as consultants in the field of Agroforestry and started our own agroforestry system three years ago.
I am interested in the effects of agroforestry on ecosystem functions. My aim is to foster research, knowledge and experience transfer and the mainstreaming of agroforestry, with a focus on temperate climate systems. I see the greatest potential in perennial agriculture for staple food production, e.g. sweet chestnuts can substitute grain, hazel can substitute soybean etc. We need systems that are ecologically and economically sound. That’s what I aim to support.

Useful links:
- German professional association for agroforestry (DeFAF): https://agroforst-info.de/
- Working Group for Rural Agriculture (AbL e.V. - with a working group on agroforestry): https://www.abl-ev.de/start
- Pomology club: https://www.pomologen-verein.de/
- Savanna institute (USA): https://www.savannainstitute.org/