Introduction
I am an environmental anthropologist and with a specific interest in understanding how society and culture cope with and adapt to climate change. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science with Development Studies at the University of Sussex (Brighton, United Kingdom), and subsequently obtained my MSc in Development and Rural Innovation at Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wageningen, The Netherlands).
In 2014, I joined the CGIAR Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics) as a junior researcher at Wageningen University and Research Centre, working on understanding scaling processes of agroecology in Nicaragua. In 2015, I moved within the Humidtropics programme to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and was based in Burundi, and subsequently Uganda. Here I was part of research that was aimed at understanding the psychobehavioural and institutional barriers and catalysts in scaling processes (ex-post) of Banana Xanthomonos Wilt (BXW, an aggressive disease in bananas) control methods across Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
I then moved to work that was based at IITA in Uganda within the CGIAR Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, where I worked within the Cocoa and Coffee research team, focussing mainly on the coffee value chain. The main focus of my work here was on the private sector engagement, where understanding coffee companies perceptions on climate change and how novel ideas from IITA and other knowledge partners could be integrated into their farmer outreach programmes. I also did a short project on the use of Photo Voice as a means of capturing coffee farmers’ perception of the impacts of climate change on their community.
My most recent position was as a Junior Researcher on Citizen Science at IHE Delft, and my most recent work is within the Ground Truth 2.0 project, which has set up and is validating six citizen observatories in real conditions, in four European and two African demonstration cases, and Women and Water for Change in Communities, which aims to promote women and youth as leaders, entrepreneurs and sustainability change agents in rural communities.
I am currently working as a Freelancer.