Götz studied biology at the Universities of Freiburg (Germany), St. Petersburg (Russia), and Frankfurt (Germany) where he graduated with a diploma on the stopover ecology of migrating waders in Central Kazakhstan. For his PhD studies he moved to the University of Groningen (Netherlands) where he completed a thesis work on the flexibility and constraints in migration and breeding of the barnacle goose. During his first postdoc at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Strasbourg he studied king penguin chicks’ thermoregulatory responses to nutritional stress and microclimate. Granted with a Marie Curie fellowship, he moved on to Lund University, and he returned to the barnacle goose study system. Currently he is based as postdoc at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). You can follow his research at ResearchGate.

Götz likes to work at the interfaces of ecology – physiology – behaviour, primarily using birds in their natural settings as his research systems. And he likes field work projects in remote areas. For example, he participated in 11 field expeditions to the Russian Arctic, including 8 expeditions to Tobseda in the Nenets AO. Beside his professional interests in fundamental science, he has also much remained an all-round ornithologist/naturalist interested in a great variety of systems. From 2009 to 2013 he served the European Ornithologist’s Union (EOU) as its secretary.