I am an Assistant Professor at the Department for Ecosystem and Landscape Dynamics (ELD) in the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED). I work across disciplines, and am seeking to strengthen the linkages between IBED and the social scientists at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) at UvA.
Before joining UvA, I spent two years as a Postdoc at the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, and completed my PhD as part of the Ecological Sciences and Engineering Interdisciplinary Graduate Program at Purdue University in Indiana, USA. During my Bachelor and Master-level studies, I joined Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg/Br., Germany, from where I received my degree in environmental hydrology (MSc).
Prior to starting my PhD studies, I spent six years working in the strategic development of international relations and interdisciplinary water research at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Germany, and one year working in an environmental NGO in France (Alsace) coordinating non-governmental stakeholders along the Rhine River.
I have a background in hydrology (MSc), and have developed integrated frameworks for the analysis of resilience and sustainability of urban water supply systems (PhD). My current research focuses on urban systems and the services they provide (water with links to food and energy), which I analyse through a complex adaptive systems lens. I am also interested in how urban communities interact with their social, ecological, and built environment, as well as the governance systems that they are embedded in.
More generally speaking, my research interest is in human-environment interactions, and how these interactions are mediated by infrastructure and institutions. Taking a social-ecological-technological systems lens, I am interested in how the structures and processes of this mediation influence the resilience of human livelihoods and the sustainability of wellbeing from local to global scales.
To read more, visit my personal website.