Expertise

Sustainable water management, closely associated with success and collapse of human civilizations, has become crucial given current climate variability.  I focus on the question how short-term interactions between humans and non-humans – especially water and associated infrastructure – create the longer-term patterns of power and processes of change that we (think we) observe or desire. Rather than focusing on one period and/or region, I study different regional cases in historical, archaeological, and current settings. My studies have brought me to places like Indonesia, Kenya, Peru, the Ancient Near East and The Netherlands – but nowadays I aim to minimize my travelling outside Europe.

The question of effective and attractive engineering education is an old one – including aspects like the order of teaching activities, how to relate knowledge, skills and applications, and how to deal with diverse student backgrounds. Often, education changes are linked to changes in society. I study how to support students to build fruitful connections between qualification, socialisation and subjectification. One does not need much fantasy to realize that these domains clash every now and then. Engineering education disciplines students by transferring selected knowledge and stressing design rules. At the same time, students are supposed to learn to think for themselves.

I also like cats…

​​​​​​​Biography

Ph.D. 2005 – Delft University of Technology. Technical Sciences (irrigation and history of technology). Thesis: Prescribing perfection. Emergence of an engineering irrigation design approach in the Netherlands East Indies and its legacy, 1830–1990. Prof.ir. Brouwer and Prof.dr.ir. Lintsen. 

M.Sc. 1993 – Wageningen University.  Irrigation Engineering.  Majors: irrigation, history, philosophy. Minor: hydraulic engineering
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