Dr. Marjanneke Vijge
Assistant Professor
Utrecht University
Dr. Marjanneke J. Vijge is Assistant Professor of Sustainability Governance in the Developing World at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. She has expertise in multilevel sustainability governance with a specific focus on developing countries. Her current research focuses on policy coherence around the Sustainable Development Goals and climate goals. She analyses the consequences for social justice, among others in the fields of climate and food security.
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Marjanneke is Utrecht Academic Coordinator of CHARM-EU and Utrecht Programme Leader of the joint European Master's programme 'Global Challenges for Sustainability'. CHARM-EU is one of the European Universities funded by the European Commission and is a collaboration between Utrecht University, University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, University of Montpellier and Eötvos Loránd University Budapest. CHARM-EU develops challenge-based and transdisciplinary education on sustainability. Marjanneke is coordinator of the Capstone, the final phase of the Master's in which student teams work together with societal actors to address a sustainability challenge. Marjanneke is also leader of the Work Package on Public Engagement as part of CHARM-EU's research component TORCH.Â
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Marjanneke recently acquired funding from NWO (the Dutch Research Council) for research on the water-energy-food nexus in South Africa. Together with Prof. Willemien Du Plessis from North-West University (South Africa), she leads this project on the social justice of water-energy-food communities and their legal implications in South Africa (April 2021-December 2024). For more information, see Research.
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As part of the ERC advanced GlobalGoals project, Marjanneke acts as country coordinator and supervises 3 PhD students in analysing the steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals at the global level as well as at national levels in the Netherlands, Ghana, Indonesia and Japan. She also supervises a PhD student on the extractive industries sector in Indonesia. For more information, see PhD supervision.
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In addition, Marjanneke is research partner and PhD co-promoter in the ClimEq research project on policy coherence around the Sustainable Development Goals and climate action, led by the Stockholm Environment Institute, with case studies in among others South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines and Sri Lanka (see Research). Â
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Over the years, Marjanneke conducted research in the areas of climate, forests, REDD+, extractive industries and agriculture in Africa and Asia. She has experience in international negotiations and politics, (sub)national policy-making, and on-the-ground projects. She has been visiting scholar at three institutes in India, Indonesia and Myanmar, and worked with different UN agencies in Italy, Myanmar and Kenya.Â
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Marjanneke received her PhD degree from Wageningen University on the topic of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), with her main field work conducted in India. After her PhD, she was selected for a Niels Stensen Fellowship with which she carried out one year of post-doctoral research in Myanmar on the governance of the extractive industries sector. Prior to joining the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Marjanneke worked as Climate Policy Expert with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
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