New colleague Floor de Wit joined ELS per January 2025

My research will focus on how regenerative agriculture, and the competencies required to be a regenerative farmer, can be integrated into green education (Groen Onderwijs in Dutch). How can green schools develop forms of teaching, learning and capacity-building that engage students meaningfully in the development of regenerative agriculture and land use? And how can we foster agency, hope, and future opportunities for young people in agriculture?

At the intersection between Rural Sociology (RSO) and Education and Learning Sciences (ELS), I will be working on this research with Arjen Wals, Margriet Goris, and Fiona Loomis as part of Re-Ge-NL, a project funded by the national growth fund (NGF) to accelerate regenerative agriculture uptake in the Netherlands.

How did I get here? During my master's in a systems approaches to sustainable and healthy diets, I developed a strong interest in transdisciplinary courses and approaches. I am particularly interested in alternative agricultural systems, food cultures, transformative education, and student empowerment. Today’s debate on wicked problems often highlights contradictions, such as between ‘sustainable’ and ‘unsustainable,’ ‘nature’ and ‘agriculture,’ or ‘research’ and ‘practice.’ I want to explore how we can bridge these contradictions and create common ground to move forward together, and this PhD is an opportunity to do so through practice-oriented research.