Marie Fujitani

Marie Fujitani serves as Professor of Human Geography with focus on Marine and Coastal Sustainable Development at the University of Bremen and Research Group Leader at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany. She operates within Programme Area 3 - Land-Ocean Fluxes and Transformation and leads the Working Group on Deliberation, Valuation and Sustainability, maintaining her office at Fahrenheitstr. 6, Room 3113.

Her academic foundation includes a Ph.D. in Marine Reserves with Fisheries Management (2014) and Master's degree in marine reserve assessment (2010), both from Arizona State University. These qualifications underpin her interdisciplinary approach to coastal sustainability challenges.

Dr. Fujitani's research program centers on natural resource management, deliberative governance processes, and sustainable coastal livelihoods, with particular emphasis on recreational/commercial fisheries and sustainable tourism systems. Her work systematically examines how ecological constraints and social dynamics interact to shape voluntary conservation investments and community-based management outcomes in marine environments.

Analysis of her 14 peer-reviewed publications (2012-2021) reveals consistent interdisciplinary scholarship bridging human geography, environmental economics, and fisheries science. Key trends include economic valuation of river biodiversity, values-based modeling of environmental behavior, and development of deliberative frameworks for comanagement - with strong geographic focus on European freshwater systems and Costa Rican coastal fisheries.

As Research Group Leader at ZMT, she directs methodological development in participatory valuation techniques and social-ecological systems analysis, emphasizing practical applications for coastal zone management through collaborative knowledge exchange with stakeholders and policymakers.