Franziska Müller

Professor of International Development at the University of Vienna. She conducts research on issues of global climate and energy justice. Her academic work is characterised by a commitment to socio-ecological transformations and a desire to critically expose discourses and power relations. With roots in the anti-nuclear and climate justice movements, she sees herself as a scholar activist whose research is closely linked to issues of political and ecological justice.

Her main areas of interest include political ecology, energy transition, energy colonialism, green extractivism and financial flows, as well as post- and decolonial studies. Müller works with qualitative methods and focuses in particular on Western and Southern African contexts in her research. A central focus is on the transformation conflicts associated with the transition to sustainable energy systems.

After studying in Tübingen, Birmingham and Frankfurt, she completed her doctorate as part of the ‘Global Social Policies & Governance’ doctoral programme at the University of Kassel and the Technical University of Darmstadt. She has been a research assistant at the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University of Kassel, headed the BMBF junior research group ‘GLOCALPOWER’, was a senior fellow at the University of Sussex and, since 2020, has been a junior professor at the University of Hamburg. International research stays have taken her to South Africa, Zambia and Ghana.