Julia Beier
Researcher
Equity and Justice Research Group
Population and Just Societies Program
Biography
Julia Beier joined the Equity and Justice Research Group of the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program as a researcher in 2022.Her research interests include social-ecological transformation pathways, transformative climate adaptation, the social implications of climate change, provisioning systems, and post-growth approaches.
Beier currently serves as Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)-funded Transform-Labor project, examining how political-economic, institutional, socio-cultural, and socio-technical conditions cause climate vulnerability among workers in essential provisioning systems, as well as the potential for transformative adaptation across governance levels. She also contributes to the COIN 2.0 project, investigating the vulnerability and wellbeing implications of climate inaction across dimensions such as labor, energy poverty, and care. Previously, as part of the DISCC-AT project, she explored intersectional vulnerability to heat stress and floods in Austria.
She is particularly interested in qualitative social science, qualitative systems analysis, mixed-methods approaches, political economy research, and inter- and transdisciplinary research processes, combining perspectives from ecological economics and social ecology.
Beier holds an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and is pursuing a PhD in the Department of Social Ecology at BOKU University, Austria.
Last update: 13 MAY 2026
Publications
Lemke, L.K.-G., Beier, J., & Hanger-Kopp, S. (2024). Exploring procedural justice in stakeholder identification using a systematic mapping approach. Environmental Science & Policy 162 e103900. 10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103900.
Beier, J., Preinfalk, E., & Hanger-Kopp, S. (2024). Exploring social vulnerability through narratives: A mixed-methods approach to develop storylines of vulnerability for heat and flood related risk in Austria. In: 3rd International Conference Natural Hazards and Risks in a Changing World- Addressing Compound and Multi-Hazard Risk, 12-13 June 2024, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Jung, M. , Beier, J., Beher, J., Huchler, K., & Hanger-Kopp, S. (2024). Integrated Conservation and Restoration Planning within a Central-European Cross-border Region. In: European Congress for conservation biology, 17-21 June 2024, Bologna.
Hanger-Kopp, S., Lemke, L., & Beier, J. (2024). What qualitative systems mapping is and what it could be: integrating and visualizing diverse knowledge of complex problems. Sustainability Science 10.1007/s11625-024-01497-3.
Beier, J., Preinfalk, E., & Hanger-Kopp, S. (2024). Building quantitative and qualitative archetypes of households to assess vulnerability to flood and heat-related risks in Austria. In: Klimatag 2024, 02-04 April 2024, Vienna, Austria.