Research topics 

• Politics of water and chemicals
• Legitimacy and efficiency of global and European environmental governance
• Sustainable urban infrastructures and municipal utilities
• Energy transition and sector integration (e.g. nexus to wastewater sector)

Current Projects

Leipziger BlauGrün

NEXOGENESIS − Facilitating the next generation of effective and intelligent water-related policies utilising artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning to assess the water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus

RECONECT − Regenarating ECOsystems with Nature-based solutions for hydro-meteorological risk rEduCTion

Former Projects

RegioZukunft:Wärme – Wärmeversorgung der „Stadt der Zukunft“ und der Region im Kontext von Transformation und Adaption, BMBF, 2020−2021

Existing Wastewater Treatment Plant´s potentials to provide ancillary services for energy grids (arrivee), German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), 2014−2017

Rescaling Environmental Governance in Europe – The EU Water Framework Directive and the scalar reconfiguration of resource regulation, German Research Foundation (DFG), 2010−2013

River Basin Governance (RiBaGo) Research Network: The European Union and China, CO-REACH ERA grant, 2009−2011

Publications & Presentations

Recent Publications:

Schröter, B., Hack, J., Hüesker, F., Kuhlicke, C., Albert, C. (2022): Beyond Demonstrators – tackling fundamental problems in amplifying nature-based solutions for the post-COVID-19 world, in: npj Urban Sustainability, DOI: 10.1038/s42949-022-00047-z.

Hüesker, F., Lepenies, R. (2022): Why does pesticide pollution in water persist? Environmental Science & Policy 128, 185-193.

Sievers, E., Zielhofer, C., Hüesker, F. (2021): Management of Global Warming Effects in the European Water Framework Directive: Consideration of Social-Ecological System Features in the Elbe River Basin District. Sustainability 13, 9111.

Zingraff-Hamed, A., Hüesker, F., Albert, C., Brillinger, M., Huang, J., Lupp, G., Scheuer, S., Schlätel, M., Schröter, B. (2020): Governance models for nature-based solutions: Seventeen cases from Germany. Ambio.

Zingraff-Hamed, A., Hüesker, F., Lupp, G., Begg, C., Huang, J., Oen, A., Vojinovic, Z., Kuhlicke, C., Pauleit, S. (2020): Stakeholder mapping to co-create nature based solutions: Who is on board? sustainability 12 (20), 8625.

Schröter, B., Zingraff-Hamed, A., Ott, E., Huang, J., Hüesker. F., Nicolas, C., Schröder, N.J.S. (2020): The knowledge transfer potential of online data pools on Nature-based Solutions. Science of the Total Environment.

Hendlin, Y., Arcuri, A., Lepenies, R., Hüesker, F. (2020): Like Oil and Water: The Politics of (Not) Assessing Glyphosate Concentrations in Aquatic Ecosystems. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 11(3), 539-564. doi:10.1017/err.2020.65.

Zingraff-Hamed, A., Schröter, B., Schaub, S., Lepenies, R., Stein, U., Hüesker, F., Meyer, C., Schleyer, C., Schmeier, S., Pusch, M.T., (2020): Perception of Bottlenecks in the Implementation of the European Water Framework Directive. Water Alternatives 13 (3), 3.

Moss, T., Hüesker, F. (2019): Politicised nexus thinking in practice: Integrating urban wastewater utilities into regional energy markets. Special issue article: Interfacing infrastructure in cities: Politics and spatialities of the urban nexus. In: Urban Studies, 1-17 (Online first version: DOI: 10.1177/0042098017735229).

Lepenies, R., Hüesker, F., Beck, S., Brugnach, M. (2018): Discovering the Political Implications of Coproduction in Water Governance. In: Water 10 (10), 1475.

Hüesker, F., Moss T. (2018): Kommunale (Abwasser-)Unternehmen als ein Standbein der dezentralen Energiewende. In: Radtke, Jörg; Kersting, Norbert (eds.): Energiewende. Politikwissenschaftliche Perspektiven, Springer, 289-312.

Gretzschel, O., Hüesker, F., Schmitt, T.G., Kolisch, G., Salomon, D., Zdrallek, M., Schiebold, D., Hanke, B. (2018): Flexibilitätsbeiträge von Kläranlagen zur Energiewende – Handlungsempfehlungen und Forderungen an Gesetzgeber und Politik. In: Korrespondenz Abwasser, Abfall 65 (3), 217ff.