Nieuws
VENI for Kathleen Neumann
Kathleen Neumann has been awarded a VENI grant for her proposal “Rural migration and environmental degradation: A vicious cycle?”. Kathleen will carry out her research at the Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing Group of Martin Herold in close collaboration with the Rural Development Sociology Group (SSG).
Human migration is an extensively researched phenomenon. However, until recently there has been little attention for environmental factors involved in migration. Moreover, surprisingly little is known regarding the environmental consequences of human migration such as deforestation and land degradation. Consequently, a clear understanding of the vicious cycle between environmental change and migration is lacking.
"My aim is to explore the causality between environmental change, population pressure, human migration, and the environmental consequences of migration for drylands and the humid tropics at high spatial resolution,” Kathleen explains. “I will systematically integrate environmental pressures, human migration, and the environmental consequences of migration with large spatial detail utilizing knowledge, data, and methods from human geography, sociology, remote sensing, ecology, and climatology.” Although essential for understanding both the environmental and social dimensions of the environment-migration nexus, such an interdisciplinary approach has rarely been used. Kathleen’s work will focus on large case studies in Indonesia and Ethiopia with the aim to further strengthen these geographic research hot spots of Wageningen University.
Martin Herold is happy about his new team member: “This VENI offers important opportunities to increase interdisciplinary and inter-departmental research at Wageningen University and to expand the collaboration with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) that are all partners for this endeavor.”