Starting in January 2027, I will take on a new role at the Rachel Carson Center (RCC) in Munich as the coordinator of research and third-party funded projects. My colleague, mentor, and friend Christof Mauch, who is also the center’s founding director, is now retiring (but hardly slowing down!), and the RCC has just entered an interim phase in which Julia Pongratz and Ralf Ludwig will lead the center until a permanent new leadership has been established. It is therefore a great honor that I will be able not only to continue my work at the center, but also to help setting its course in this new and exciting period.
What happens next for the RCC is to be decided by the new scientific board, with whom I will be working too, but contrary to previous fears I am glad to let everybody know that the center is not shutting down or fading into obscurity. We will continue receiving visiting scholars and third-party-funded projects, and new initiatives will be announced later on.
My affiliation with the Rachel Carson Center started in the spring of 2017, when I took a break from my MA studies in Gothenburg for an internship at the center. I got hired shortly thereafter and started writing my PhD thesis under the auspice of the two directors, Christof Mauch and Helmuth Trischler, and I’ve had the honor to develop the center’s journals and coordinate its participation in the EU-funded Speak4Nature project. To help the center find a direction that is new but also in the spirit of Christof’s and Hemluth’s original vision is therefore a great honor bestowed upon me.
I look forward to the future of the RCC, as well as to see what Christof Mauch will come up with next.
Dr. des. Jonatan Palmblad 
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