Research focus: ocean and climate changes in the (recent) geological past. 

With my background in marine sciences (marine biology and ecology), my research wants to provide an historical perspective to recent changes occurring in the ocean, and coastal areas, a key factor in the discussion for a sustainable (future) ocean. 

My main expertise is in marine palynology a field, which uses fossil remains of marine organisms (dinoflagellates) as proxy for paleoenvironmental and paleoclimate reconstructions. The complexity of the marine and the climate systems requires a multidisciplinary approach and my projects are highly interdisciplinary (inorganic and organic geochemistry, sedimentology, micropaleontology).

Main interests and projects relate to:

Coastal seas: eutrophication trends, including Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), and hypoxia/anoxia: natural variability vs anthropogenic impact; Land-sea nexus, rivers, deltas, estuaries

Neogene climate and oceanography in the Arctic and Antarctic Ocean;

Mediterranean Sea: Late Quaternary paleoceanography, including episodes of widespread anoxia (sapropels);

Sustainable Ocean: the Sustainable Ocean Community (Pathways to Sustainibility, UU), which I have set up together with Erik van Sebille (Physics), Alex Oude Elferink (REBO), broadens my view on the ocean as a living organism, and this spikes ideas on how humans can achieve a sustainable use of the ocean, if humans have the right to intervene on the ocean, and more scientific, legal, philosophical and ethical questions. It is just the beginning, more to come ...  

CHECK IT OUT! https://www.uu.nl/en/research/sustainability/thematic-communities/sustainable-ocean