Robert Busch

I am a geographer from Berlin. From 2014 to 2020 I studied at the Institute of Geographical Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin. I completed the bachelor’s program in Geographical Sciences in 2018 and the consecutive master’s program in Geographical Environmental Research in 2020. During my studies, I specialized in physical geography, emphasizing geomorphological analysis and quantification of human-environment interactions. Following my master’s studies, I started my doctorate in the DFG-funded project “Mobile villages and dynamic landscapes: the Varamin Plain from the late 5th to the early 3rd mill.” at FU Berlin. My research focused on the geoarchaeological investigation of a prehistoric site in a Quaternary alluvial fan setting in northern Iran. Due to Iran’s political and pandemic situation, we could not conduct fieldwork until 2022, and I ended my research for the project. Since the summer of 2022, I am part of the DFG-funded project: “The Transformation of the Micro-region Pergamon between the Hellenistic Period and the Roman Imperial Age”. Within the framework of the transdisciplinary project between the DAI Istanbul, the Freie Universität and Technische Universität Berlin, as well as the Celal Bayar Üniversitesi in Manisa and the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, the project assesses the diachronic development of the Pergamon Micro-region and addresses how human-environmental interactions shaped it. The focus of my doctorate is now on modeling and reconstructing socio-ecological interactions in the Pergamon Micro-region. In this context, my research’s primary interest involves assessing land use potentials and their trade-offs against landscape sensitivity. This comes along with the application of an agro-ecological model that captures the human land use and climate for different time slices between 300 BCE and 300 CE. Ultimately, this approach will help to address the settlement dynamics within the Pergamon Micro-Region from a utility perspective.