Think Camp – Rural Development: Future-oriented Approaches Bringing Economics, Management and Social Sciences into Practice

This Think Camp is an international cooperation within the scope of the Euroleague for Life Sciences and is organised by faculties and departments that focus on economics, management and social sciences from BOKU Vienna, CULS Prague, SGGW Warsaw and Wageningen University in cooperation with the University of Hohenheim, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the University of Copenhagen and is also open for students from other universities. It addresses rural development issues in interdisciplinary views and aims to bring students and teachers from various countries and fields of work together in order to discuss subjects, to exchange knowledge, to improve the quality of students’ work and to improve the skills of students in a practical project.

Course leader

Hans Karl Wytrzens

Target group

The underlying idea of the Summer School is to give students the opportunity to present drafts of their PhD and Master theses, which is related to “rural development” and to get some critical feedback and ideas from other students and teachers.

Course aim

Students have to prepare a paper that is linked to his or her thesis topic. Additionally, students have to give comments and feedback on other papers that will be discussed during the Summer School.

Every student will present his or her paper in class, where it will be discussed. In between teachers from the universities will give lectures about their current research topic and specialisation. Additionally, one excursion will be organised for the participants and students will carry out a case study of a rural development project.

After the Summer School students are expected to include the feedback and comments from the classes in their paper and to finish it. Papers will get collected and published online in the Summer School Proceedings if several quality standards are met (at the discretion of the editors).