- Field of expertise
- Project identification and development
- Capacity building for key stakeholders
- Cross-border cooperation
- Land restoration
- Research and innovation
- Country of residence
- Austria
- Languages
- English
- German
- Regional experience
- Lausitz Brandenburg
- Lausitz Sachsen
- Mitteldeutsches Revier Sachsen
- Mitteldeutsches Revier Sachsen-Anhalt
- Silesia
- Zasavska
- Savinjska
- Austria
Jörn Harfst currently works as a Research Associate at the Institute for Geography and Regional Science at the University of Graz. He has been involved in European cooperation projects for over 10 years (mainly INTERREG), managing and leading different project consortia with a specific focus on former industrial regions, having close contact with regional actors. As the projects centred around economic, social, and ecological transformation processes in these regions, he has extensive experience in project identification and development in the specific field of regional transformations, as well as in the establishment of transnational cooperation between regions on the selected topics. Given the scope of the projects, they aimed less on structural factors but rather on capacity building of key stakeholders. Among the issues targeted in the projects, brownfield development emerged as a recurring and common issue in restructuring processes. The superior interest was to foster research and knowledge on the topic of regional transformations in (former) industrial regions.