Susanne Koch

Susanne Koch is a Postdoc Principal Investigator at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), leading research on science and sustainability governance. She holds a habilitation in Sociology (2024) and a PhD in Sociology from Bielefeld University (2015, with distinction). Her work focuses on gender- and geography-related inequalities in science, particularly in forest research and development aid. She leads the DFG-funded In-Forest project examining epistemic effects of inequalities in forest science, collaborating with institutions like Stellenbosch University and Leiden University.

She has held roles at TUM’s Chair of Forest and Environmental Policy (2016–2021) and was a DAAD-funded visiting scholar at CWTS, Leiden University. Her research integrates science studies and environmental governance, addressing knowledge diversity and societal transformation. Awards include the DAAD postdoc fellowship and recognition for her PhD thesis on foreign experts’ impact on policymaking in South Africa and Tanzania.

Key research themes: science-policy interfaces, epistemic justice, global sustainability transformations. She is a Research Fellow at CREST (Stellenbosch) and affiliated with the Global Research Programme on Inequality (GRIP). Recent work critiques conference representation as constitutive of scientific fields and advocates for cognitive justice in academic spaces.