Ulrich is a professor at Coventry University in England, part of United Kingdom. He is a co-founder of the university’s research centres on agroecology (CAFS, CAWR) based at Ryton Organic Gardens, a 10 ha certified organic horticultural farm, which Coventry University bought in 2019. Ulrich is an agricultural and horticultural scientist and economist and has 35 years experience in organic horticulture, food and farming research.

Ulrich has been working in multi-actor EU projects since framework-5, being task-, workpackage-leader, and coordinator in Horizon. His research is transdisciplinary combining social and natural science with practical knowledge and co-designed with innovative ecological food and farming businesses of any size and complexity (e.g. community supported agriculture). In his academic work Ulrich has specialised in organic/agroecological horticulture and agriculture and ecological economics. Urban agroecology, agroforestry, vegan organic, bio-dynamic, social farming, and the environmental, social and governance issues of just food systems from the bottom-up are of interest. In addition, Ulrich has long expertise in modelling farm, environmental and policy/economics data sets. Example projects are: EU-Rotate-N, FOODMETRES, BioGreenhouse, Waste Few-ULL, Organic-PLUS, Peat-phaseout research, AGROMIX, UNDERTREES, Agroecology for Europe (AE4EU), FOOdIVERS, Procurement for Good, SCALE-IT. 

Prior to the establishment of the agroecology research centres at Ryton, Ulrich has worked as a Senior Horticultural Economist for Garden Organic (working name of the Henry Doubleday Reserach Association - HDRA) at Ryton Organic Gardens, and as visiting Professor of Organic Agriculture at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in South-Tyrol, Italy. His PhD was in an international research project with Israel and Philippines on tree-physiology and salinity in mango rootstocks at Humboldt University Berlin. Non-academic professional work is as organic farm inspector and ecological farm business consultant during the transition in Eastern Europe after 1989. Ulrich holds an agricultural engineering and economics Diploma (MSc) and a BSc in Philosophy from Bonn and Munich universities (TU, LMU) in West-Germany. His family farm is in Bavaria, near Ingolstadt on the Danube, halfway on the Roman road from 'Old' York to Istanbul.

Organic horticulture; Agroecology; Ecological economics; Urban agroecology including health and wellbeing of gardening; Governance, sustainability and standards of ecological food and farming systems; Social and ecological return on investment; organic agriculture, vegan organic, greenhouse crops, fruit trees, agroforestry, silvopasture and silvohorticulture