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I am a professor at Tbilisi State University's (TSU) Department of Human Geography, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, and a visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich (since 2002). In 1991-92, I was a Swedish Institute research fellow at the universities of Stockholm and Lund, and in 1998-99, I was a Fulbright scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

I served as vice-rector of TSU from 2014 to 2017 and as vice-president of the Geographic Society of Georgia from 2008 to 2016. I am also a member of the Network of the Caucasus Mountain Region's scientific steering committee. As a land policy specialist, I perform comprehensive research and collaborate with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UN-Habitat, UN Food, and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other international organizations such as KfW, GIZ, and USAID. I am a member of the editorial boards of three international scientific journals, the author and editor of three books, and the author of over fifty publications. My Research interests include urban studies, housing, and land policy, and sustainable mountain development.

I am a professor for Human Geography at the Department of Geography of the University of Zurich. I currently teach and do research on globalisation, nature conservation and landscape. I am mainly interested in perceptions of changes by different interest groups. With my and my group’s research I want to contribute to sustainable development. Regionally I did and do research in Southeast Asia and in Switzerland. Moreover, I supervise research in Central and North Asia. I am a member of the Swiss Federal National Park commission and co-director of the University Priority Programme Global Change and Biodiversity.

I am a social scientist at Tbilisi State University who studies socio-economic transitions in mountain regions as a result of global change. I'm curious about the role that tourism progress plays in transforming places and traditional livelihoods. I apply inter and transdisciplinary methods to investigate these complex phenomena by leaving no stakeholder behind. 

During my PhD, I aimed to broaden established knowledge by investigating various mountain economic activities under the umbrella of the tourism supply chain and its geographical context. On this basis, I call into question the local economy's long-term viability by putting its reliance solely on tourism in Georgia's mountains.

I am a human geographer interested in social and political dimensions of protected areas and landscape planning. With a research focus in Switzerland, I engage with questions of equity and justice in environmental negotiations and participatory processes and how these are intertwined with and influenced by social values. 

Currently, I am a group leader at the Department of Geography, University of Zurich (Landscape and Conservation Social Sciences), and part of the research project ValPar.CH. Here, we want to better understand different stakeholders' perceptions of landscapes and landscape elements, the meanings attributed to them and how they emerge in embodied, emotional experiences. By unraveling these meanings, we will gain insight into the social values of different ecosystem services in Swiss regional nature parks. Generally, I am interested in human-nature relationships: How do we speak about and engage with our surroundings, and how do we shape and interact with what we call 'nature'?

Get in contact with us! We love to hear from you.

University of Zurich, Department of Geography
Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich
Switzerland

eMail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone number: +41 44 635 52 43

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MTA - MountainApp wants to inspire people to immerse themselves in landscapes. MTA - MountainApp is a project jointly run by researchers from Switzerland and Georgia. MTA -  MountainApp was developed for a transnational research seminar taught at the University of Zurich and the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. The app is used to facilitate cross-border student collaboration and learning and to introduce students to sustainable mountain development through the lens of the Alpine and Caucasus mountains. We are interested in learning more about places and landscapes people visit and experience in their everyday lives. By collecting this data, we want to better understand people’s relationships to different kinds of landscapes and landscape elements. With a focus on these relationships, the project aims to analyze values and meanings attached to landscapes.

We want to draw attention to contemporary challenges of mountainous regions and bring people living in these areas closer together. Fun fact: “Mta” is the Georgian term for “mountain”!