CLUE+ Research Programmes

Programme Coordinators

• Inclusive Landscape Transformations

  Evelien de Hoop (Athena Institute, Faculty of Science) researches and teaches on the intersections between socio-ecological landscape change and health. Academically, she is rooted in Science and Technology Studies (STS), critical geography, post- and decolonial studies and connected history, among others. She has a leading role in various international projects including NWO-funded project Soy Stories, H2020 project FoodCLIC and Alternatives2Extractivism. Her work is distinctly transdisciplinary, connecting the Inclusive Landscape Transformations’ research agenda to those of a wide variety of relevant societal partners across the globe.

  Sjoerd Kluiving, (Director CLUE+), studied Physical Geography and Geology at the University of Amsterdam and University of Alabama (U.S.A). As a geologist and physical geographer involved in applying earth sciences to archeology in interdisciplinary research and teaching, with emphasis on the Anthropocene. Project management in (field-based) evaluation of archeological monuments, extensive teaching and research experience and initiator and project manager of involving cultural history in planning processes. Sjoerd co-leads the Environmental Humanities Center at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 

• Environmental and Health Humanities

  Kristine Steenbergh is senior lecturer English Literature at the Faculty of Humanities. She specializes in the history of emotions and the Environmental Humanities.  As of 1 January 2020, Kristine took over as new coordinator of the CLUE+ research program Paradigms of Creativity, continuing as co-coordinator of the new program Environmental and Health Humanities. This research program joins humanities approaches to human-nature relations, health and medicine, and emotions and senses.

  Erin La Cour's current research focuses on both the intermediality and mediality of comics in several socio-historical cultural milieux. She is faculty advisor for the creative writing and experimental image/text journal Expanded Field, is a member of the Nordic Network for Comics Research, and is the co-founder and co-director of Amsterdam Comics, an independent research consortium. Erin has been co-coordinator of the Environmental and Health Humanities research program since its establishment in 2022.

• Globalisation, Capitalisation, Capitalism

  The program focusses on movements of people, their artefacts and ideas across space, and the connections between societies that arise out of those movements. 

  Susie Protschky is Professor of Global Political History. She is specialised in modern Dutch colonialism, Indonesian history, and the history of photography. Her research ranges across visual cultures of war and violence, environment and natural disaster, gender, race and citizenship.

• Knowledge in Context

  Ab (Abraham) Flipse is University Historian of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is based in the Cultural History research group within the Faculty of Humanities, where he conducts and coordinates research on the history of universities (especially the history of the VU Amsterdam), of science, of medicine, of science and religion, as well as teaches on a variety of subjects. Since its establishment in 2022, Ab had been the second co-coordinator of the CLUE+ Knowledge in Context research program. 

  Marije Martijn is Professor of Ancient Philosophy, specialized in Neoplatonic philosophy: especially theories of knowledge, nature, mathematics. 

• Traces of the Transcendent

  Hans Alma (Faculty of Religion and Theology) is a full professor spiritual care and religious-humanist meaning. Her academic work is based on her interest in the ways by which people give meaning to their lives and which sources they use in doing so. A central focus of her research is the role of imagination and art in the search for meaning.

  Gertie Blaauwendraad Assistant Professor, Faculty of Religion and Theology, Beliefs and Practices.