Welcome to the Leibniz Best Minds Project RuWell

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.
News
03 March 2023
RuWell researchers participate in the 4th Annual Berlin Network of Research on Well-being (BeWell) meeting
The captivating keynote address by Bruno.S.Frey at the 4th Annual Berlin Network of Research on Well-being (BeWell) meeting underscored the need for research to advocate for an environment that promotes opportunities for people to be happy. Our...
02 March 2023
RuWell moves to unsnarl the concept of place attachment through its explaratory fieldwork in Southeast Europe
Our colleague Arjola recently presented an exciting fieldwork plan at our department meeting on behalf of the RuWell team. The plan is for an exploratory fieldwork activity in Southeast Europe aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of rural people's...
11 January 2023
Preliminary fieldwork in Albania
In October 2022, the RuWell team of researchers including Dr. Antje Jantsch and Dr. Arjola Arapi-Gjini engaged in fieldwork in rural Albania. The aim was to pretest existing guidelines for the upcoming qualitative research, an essential part of the...