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Team VU Athena Institute in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
VU Amsterdam is a Dutch university.
At the VU, the Athena Institute focuses on transdisciplinary research, with an emphasis on global and sustainable approaches.
Caroline Kreysel
Environmental Historian with Heritage Studies training
I am a PhD candidate in the Soy Stories project investigating the environmental history of soy use in the Netherlands. My academic background is in environmental history as well as heritage studies. I am especially interested in more-than-human histories, landscape and land use change and interactions between humans and their environment.
Sjamme van de Voort
Cultural Historian specialised in Memory Studies
Before coming to the Soy Stories team to work on theories and methodologies that connect sustainability historiographies across national and disciplinary borders, I used to be a cultural historian and wrote a PhD about how theories from the field of memory studies could be operationalised to understand communities of migrants. The Cuban-American community in Miami Dade County served as a case study for that research, and the Chilean-Swedish community in Gothenburg, Sweden, as a control-study in a smaller project following the dissertation. As a member of the Soy Stories team, I use this experience of working theoretically and methodologically with people’s perceptions of time and space to build the transdisciplinary tools that we need to work across the many fields that we cover as a group.
Evelien de Hoop
Sustainable Health Researcher, PhD Guide & Project Co-coordinator
In a way, the SOY STORIES project spins a multiplicity of yarns at and between multiple sites across the globe. As researcher, I take part in spinning these yarns as well as studying the process of doing so. As project co-coordinator, together with Erik van der Vleuten and Claiton da Silva, and as PhD guide, I hope to support this process. To do so, I draw upon training in a variety of fields, including bits of STS, human geography, anthropology, and earth- and climate sciences, my more hands-on experience with reflexive transdisciplinary and intervention-oriented research approaches, and earlier research engagements with questions around the pasts, presents and futures of land, (landless) farmers and biofuels in colonial and contemporary India, on the knowledge politics of smart urbanization, and participatory governance of Dutch countryside.
Marjoleine van der Meij
Museum Exhibit Designer and Science Museologist
I am collaborating on the conceptualisation and evaluation of a science museum exhibit for Soy Stories. We will co-create this exhibit with visitors, researchers, story tellers and (science) museum professionals.
Jacqueline Broerse
Transdisciplinary Transformative Research Expert
Jacqueline Broerse works on multi-stakeholder knowledge production for inclusive sustainability transformations in global North, South, and transnational contexts. She leads several large research programs on food system transformation policies in Europe, Africa and South America.