Three graduates of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna were honoured on 25 October 2023 as part of an academic ceremony in the Festsaal with the Inge Dirmhirn Sponsorship Award 2022 at an academic ceremony.

DIin Barbara Öllerer received the Inge Dirmhirn Award for her master's thesis "Gender-specific barriers in forestry: How do Austrian female leaders perceive barriers and what are their strategies to overcome them?". In it, she explores the question of what obstacles female managers in the Austrian forestry sector perceive on their career path and how they deal with them. The work was supervised by Prof. Karl Hogl and Priv.-Doz.in Alice Ludwig at the Institute for Forest, Environmental and Resource Policy at the Department of Economic and Social Sciences.

Maria Elisabeth Thornton was honoured with the Inge Dirmhirn Award for her Master's thesis "The creative interstices of the city". Her thesis, supervised by Ao. Prof. Christiane Brandenburg at the Institute for Landscape Development, Recreation and Nature Conservation Planning at the Department of Space, Landscape and Infrastructure, she deals with the topic of socio-cultural diversity in the interim use of urban open spaces in Vienna.

In her master's thesis "Gender vulnerability to climate change: a systematic review and insights of a Latin American case study", Leticia Carolina Zavala, the third Inge Dirmhirn Award winner, uses the case study of Buenos Aires in Argentina to analyse the factors that influence women's vulnerability to climate impacts. She was supervised by Vice-Rector Assoc. Prof. Doris Damyanovic at BOKU's Institute of Landscape Planning in the Department of Space, Landscape and Infrastructure and by Prof. Anne Gravsholt Busck at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen.

The Inge Dirmhirn Award is organised by the Equal Opportunities Working Party (AKGL BOKU). The prize, totalling € 3,000, is awarded to students or graduates of BOKU for a Bachelor's or Master's thesis or dissertation that has already been approved. The topic of the thesis must be gender- and/or diversity-specific with BOKU-relevant content. Theses written in German or English with a creative approach that are particularly interdisciplinary and go beyond the average of good research are particularly welcome.

The next call for applications for the Inge Dirmhirn Award is expected to take place in autumn 2024.

Contact and enquiries:
Office of the Equal Opportunities Working Party (Mag.a Eva Ploss)
eMail: akglboku(at)boku.ac.at

19.12.2023