Welcome!

I am a senior researcher in the international policy department at Wageningen Economic Research, part of Wageningen University and Research. I am also a guest research scholar (out of office) at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

I try to combine my economic and quantitative background with experience from working and living in various developing countries to analyze research questions related to economic growth, food and nutrition security, and climate change. As tackling these large and complex issues requires a multi-disciplinary and integrated approach, I use a variety of tools, including global simulation models, in particular our in-house computable general equilibrium model MAGNET, spatial microsimulation, econometric analysis and GIS, and like to collaborate with agronomists, hydrologists and other scientists from different fields.

Currently, I am leading work package four of the CGIAR SHiFT initiative, which deals with the analysis of trade-offs and synergies associated with the transformation to healthy and sustainable diets. I am also leading work package seven of the Horizon Europe BrightSpace project, which objective is develop new approaches and indicators to assess income, health and other socio-economic domains (together referred to as the just operating space) of EU agriculture now and in the future.

Other current research activities include improving the creation of crop distribution maps (in collaboration with colleagues from the International Food Policy Research Institute), development of a spatial microsimulation model to assess future patterns of income, poverty and consumption change and the application of machine learning approaches to map the location of farmers. In my free time, you can find me on a skate- kitesurf or snowboard. In case there is time left, I also enjoy playing football, running, collecting records on vinyl and going to live concerts.

I like to work with bright students who are interested in conducting quantitative research, empirical work and data analysis (R skills required) and my projects frequently offer possibilities (e.g. country case-studies) for internships (including a fairly generous monthly allowance for students registered at a Dutch University) or provide topics for Bachelor or Master theses. Please feel free to send me an email if you are interested.