Rural well-being in transition: multidimensional drivers and effects on (im)mobility

RuWell is a Leibniz Best Minds project funded by the Leibniz Association. The RuWell team of this Leibniz Junior Research Group is led by Antje Jantsch and is investigating quality of life in rural Southeast Europe and East Germany by developing a Multidimensional Well-being Index (MWI) for these areas. We aim at decoding the link between quality of life and (im)mobility decisions of rural residents with a special focus on the dimension of place attachment that has received little attention in this context. Our target countries include Albania, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania, and East Germany. The project is largely inspired by and builds on Antje Jantsch’s outstanding academic achievements, more especially in the thematic areas of quality of life, happiness research, and subjective well-being.

We seek to generate policy-salient research findings that will shape public discourse on matters pertaining to quality of life in rural Europe. Sharing our findings is at the heart of our research activities, and we follow the guidelines of Good Scientific Practice stipulated by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Leibniz Association. RuWell collaborates with scientists from various disciplines and institutions, see the “partners” section for more details about this.