Teaching
My teaching aims to instil critical thinking and understanding and provide the skills to become sustainability leaders.
Global environmental change will shape the coming generations through direct impacts, and the way society addresses change through both adaptation and mitigation. I want students to understand this complexity and the importance of holistic thinking in identifying solutions.
Learning how to effectively work with public, private and societal stakeholders is essential to understand socio-ecological systems and support strategies and policies to cope with these challenges. I therefore expose students to different perspectives and train them to communicate and collaborate with different audiences.
Course delivery and lectures
Since 2017 I am the Director of Postgraduate Research, responsible for the 250 post-graduate research students in the School of GeoSciences at The University of Edinburgh. I thereof have limited responsibility for direct course delivery at the moment, but I do supervise 6-10 dissertations each year and contribute guest lectures where I can.
AlterNet Summer School
from 2017
This unique summer school brings together 30 PhD students in a remote French Alpine village to consider and resolve the sustainability challenges that society is currently facing. I first attended the summer school as a PhD student in 2003 and have since contributed as speaker and tutor. Since 2017 I lecture about policy making and planning in an uncertain future.
MSc Environmental Sustainability
from 2013
I've throughly enjoyed my contributions to this highly interdisciplinary 1-year MSc programme as Programme Director and tutor. The programme encourages thinking across different disciplines to blend scientific, socio-economic and policy perspectives for a stronger understanding of sustainability and how it can be achieved.
Case-studies in Sustainable Development
2013-2016
In this core course of the MSc Environmental Sustainability practitioners and policymakers explain how they have implemented real-life sustainability solutions and reflect on the challenges and skills required to implement change. As course organiser I initiated group projects where students act as consultant to the university's sustainability department and changed the assessment from essays to policy briefs to allow students to develop a new transferable skill.
Post-graduate research training
2012-2017
As academic head for research training I coordinated and developed the core training programme for our 250 PhD students. I thought the introductory Research Management in the GeoSciences course to starting PhD students, adding data-management module and guidance to develop a write a research plan.
Ecosystem Values and Management - online
2012-2017
I developed and taught this distance learning course, part of the online Global Challenges MSc. This course considers the roles that ecosystems play in providing a range of ecosystem services that underlie human well-being and quality of life.
Scenario Planning
2009-2018
I thought a four week scenario planning module in the postgraduate Integrated Research Planning course. Students developed qualitative storylines which were then quantified using the CLIMSAVE integrated assessment platform which combines climate and socio-economic drivers of change.
SENSE summer school "Understanding Global Environmental Change"
2006-2008
I developed the curriculum and organised two international global change summer schools focusing on understanding global environmental change for the Dutch environmental science graduate school SENSE.
Ecosystems and human well-being
2006
I developed courseware supporting the ecosystem services assessment assignment for the Ecosystems and human well-being course of the Dutch Open University