What employers told us
To better understand what employers expect from geography graduates, we spoke with organisations across the DACH region, including think tanks, international organisations and institutions from the private sector.
The skills below reflect the competencies that were mentioned during these conversations. They illustrate the broad range of abilities employers associate with geography graduates, from analytical and methodological expertise to communication, teamwork and the ability to navigate complex global challenges.
This overview is intended to give you an idea of the diverse skill set that can be developed during the programme.
Testimonials about the Specialization
What particularly interested me about the program was its flexibility, ranging from courses in migration theory and lecture series on climate change to courses in remote sensing, population statistics, and applied econometrics. This gave me the opportunity to develop my own profile according to my ideas and, above all, in an interdisciplinary manner. Nowadays, this helps me because I have acquired a broad knowledge base, understand various scientific disciplines, and can therefore work in a very interdisciplinary and holistic way myself.
Simon Merschrot
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Three years ago, I moved to Vienna for the geography master’s “Global Change and Sustainability”, but particularly for the specialization on climate change and human migration/mobility. I had been fascinated by this topic for a while already, but my ideas about it didn’t reach much further than problematic media representations that present it with words as “mass migration” and “climate refugees”. This program showed how much more nuanced and complex this topic is. It taught me to become a more critical and reflective thinker, and motivated me to pursue my own research project in Nepal for my thesis. Now that it’s finished, I look back at three incredibly insightful years that made me want to continue thinking about and working on these topics for the years to come.
Robin Abbing
PhD Canidate
I was particularly interested in the programme's focus on socio-environmental and migration dynamics and how this applied to the global climate context. The way the Master's was structured encouraged a high level of independent, student-led learning, allowing me to pursue my own interests and align my studies with specific areas of the migration field that I am passionate about and relevant to my career goals. The Master's programme has been especially valuable in my current role, supporting qualitative, research-informed practice and deepening my knowledge of climate impacts and the paths to sustainability.
Georgia Mosey
Geography Teacher