Trained as an environmental scientist, I mostly work on spatial environmental assessments in Europe and beyond in agriculture- and forest-dominated land systems. In past studies, I managed to model the impacts of global trade of biomass spatially explicit and made them comparable for different world regions. Prior, I was postdoc and PhD student at different institutions such as the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the University of Munich.
Within 4TU RE, I will strengthen the food system perspective. I assess the resilience of value chains in food systems in response to increasing internal and external pressures, including new opportunities resulting from ambitions to close the value chain cycle at the regional level. My aim is to determine success factors for resilient value chains considering regional specificities between different regions in Europe and especially beyond. This will include projections for the diffusion of alternative value chains and guidance for tailored policy schemes.
Most research in 4TU RE takes a Dutch or European perspective. However, major shocks challenging food systems’ resilience will arise in low- and middle-income countries through global change and especially dietary and consumption changes. Specifically, my main challenge will be to locate these impacts on agricultural value chains and the impact on land use, the environment and rural societies.