I love places where land meets water of some kind (coasts and shores but also mountains and ice) and if there is some fire with it the better – the sun in Greece or volcanoes on Iceland. These places wake my interest and inspire me! This has to do with my love for water based activities (sailing, swimming, snorkeling etc.), with the esthetical qualities of interface-landscapes and, for an environmentally interested person also with ecological characteristics of such interfaces – a challenging, highly varying environment leading to beautiful and high biological diversity.
I was born at the Lake of Geneva with a fantastic view on the lake and the Alps behind. We then moved to Lake Greifensee close to Zurich, where we had a boat and went sailing and swimming. In the mid 70s, our family spent time in the US and travelled all the way from Pennsylvania to California. There, I met the sea - Atlantic and the Pacific – for the first time in life, and was thrilled – of the waves, the tides, and what is left on the shore and being in the salt water and eating seafood. I wanted to become a marine biologist.
Back in Switzerland, my parents bought a house in village close to the city of Winterthur – in the middle between Zurich and Constance – without lake, and no river either. The only water close by was the local swimming pool smelling chlorine. So, travelling and holidays at the sea or on a canal ferry was always a great thing. We discovered Greek and Italian shores and archipelagos and large parts of France. Even today, I regularly spend some weeks in Greece on the beautiful island of Korfu, to relax, enjoy the countryside and interact with the locals, who have become friends, and of course to be in and on the water.
When we were small, my brother and me made landscapes in the sand and drew maps and invented and planned city- and landscapes… Later on, we became scouts and used drawings and maps in outdoor activities in the Alps and lowlands. I like maps – to get to know an area, for hiking, navigation, but also for collecting and just putting on the wall. Many maps are artwork!
Maybe because of all that, I studied environmental sciences with a lot of water and human dimensions and finally ended up in spatial planning in the Canton of Thurgovia with Lake Constance providing the necessary water again. I got interested in participation and conflict management and transboundary collaboration on the management of water bodies, but the sea was still far away. Then, a research project on sustainable coastal zone management (SuCoZoMa) at Gothenburg university in Sweden offered PhD opportunities and I had fallen in love with the Swedish archipelago, especially the West coast. It looks at the same time very marine and very alpine. One of the case study in my thesis on participation and conflict management in coastal planning, Koster, has since then never been much out of focus – both leisure-wise and in my research on coastal and marine planning and management, participation and sustainable development.
Today, I live on an island on the Swedish West coast and I am half-time working on an island in the middle of Stockholm – with daily view on the water. My present work is on development of institutional systems to use and enjoy the sea and coastal areas in a long-term sustainable way (i.e. Marine Spatial Planning). This includes people and places and solving conflicts and finding common visions and a lot of being in marine and coastal places to meet the people I work with.