MSc. Janne van den Akker

Position: Teacher - Researcher
Professorship: Circular Entrepreneurship in Agrifood
Email: j.van.den.akker@aeres.nl
Social media: LinkedIn, X

Janne van den Akker became a member of the Circular Entrepreneurship in the Agrifood Sector research team at Aeres University of Applied Sciences in Dronten in November of 2016. After studying Environmental Science and Biology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, she worked for many years for IMSA Amsterdam, a research and advisory agency specialised in sustainability and innovation. Her key concepts were systems thinking and stakeholder dialogue (between businesses, local government and NGOs) and her specialisations were ecology, agriculture and food.

From 2014 to 2016, Janne worked for the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, where she focused on organic waste streams in urban agricultural areas with the application of decentralised technology, such as composting, fermentation and fungi breeding.

At Aeres University of Applied Sciences in Dronten she works on, among other things, the sustainable reuse of agricultural waste streams. She also provides education on environment and sustainability related themes in various study areas, including the courses in Orientation in Sustainability, Circular Economy, Agricultural and Food Policy, and Professional Ethics. She is especially interested in climate change – both the risks that agriculture faces due to climate change and the role agriculture plays in preventing these risks.

At Aeres University of Applied Sciences in Almere, she is involved in several projects, including the VeenVitaal research project of Living Lab  about making fen meadows more sustainable. She also teaches and coaches the students from the Earth & Climate programme. Besides this, she coordinates the Sustainable Urban Regions minor, which is about greening city regions and making city regions climate adaptive.