Anne Beaulieu appointed Professor of Knowledge Infrastructures for Sustainability

Professor Anne Beaulieu has been appointed to the newly established Chair in Knowledge Infrastructures for Sustainability within the Faculty of Geosciences’ Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development (Department of Sustainable Development), effective 1 February 2026. She will focus on developing knowledge infrastructures in biodiversity and climate science to support liveable futures.

“We are delighted to welcome Professor Beaulieu,” says Prof. Annemarie van Wezel, Dean of the Faculty of Geosciences. “Her deep expertise in knowledge infrastructures, data practices, and reflexive inquiry is essential to both reflect and act to further improve knowledge infrastructures for sustainability. This includes our own performance as university in research and education in sustainability science”. 

Professor Beaulieu joins Utrecht University from the University of Groningen, where she currently holds the Aletta Jacobs Chair of Knowledge Infrastructures.  “I will build on the collaborative approach to knowledge infrastructures that I have developed in the areas of biodiversity and climate science. This work both critiques and improves the use and design of knowledge infrastructures, in particular in terms of the datafication of sustainability.”

Research at the crossroads of knowledge and sustainability

Beaulieu’s research sits at the intersection of science and technology studies, environmental philosophy, and data studies. She examines how knowledge is produced, shared, and trusted, and how data systems influence whose perspectives count in addressing issues like climate change and biodiversity.

My work both critiques and improves the use and design of knowledge infrastructures, in particular in terms of the datafication of sustainability”

Beaulieu’s path includes a PhD in Science & Technology Dynamics from the University of Amsterdam and ten years as a researcher in the group Networked Research and Digital Information and at the Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences of the KNAW. She has published extensively on the role of ethnographic methods in understanding data practices and served as Director of the Data Research Centre at Groningen (2019–2023). She was recently a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam (2023-24).

Knowledge Infrastructures for Liveable Futures

In her new role Professor Beaulieu will play a central role in connecting theoretical, normative, and empirical perspectives on sustainability. “Together with colleagues at Utrecht University, I will further pursue the team science approach I pioneered at the University of Groningen, Campus Fryslân, in order to develop the kinds of knowledge infrastructures that are needed for liveable futures”. Her book on this topic will appear early next year.

Knowledge infrastructures shape knowledge in ways that are crucial for how we live, since they reinforce particular worldviews through the categories and overviews they convey. In very concrete ways—through regulations, monitoring, evidence-based policy—they play a determinant role in establishing what kinds of questions can be asked as well as what kind of evidence is considered appropriate and sufficient to answer them. 

I see a lot of potential to engage students on fundamental issues around sustainability via the topics that knowledge infrastructures foreground”

Beaulieu has also developed ways of incorporating knowledge infrastructures in education and engagement of different publics, using digital interfaces.“I see a lot of potential in this way to engage students on fundamental issues around sustainability, and in ongoing developments in digitalisation, AI and sensing. It is crucial to equip students conceptually and practically to engage with these issues in order to formulate and pursue sustainability goals.”

Building on transdisciplinary expertise at Utrecht University

For Beaulieu, the Faculty of Geosciences is an outstanding context to further expand a fruitful approach to knowledge infrastructures. “Not only is there remarkable expertise on transdisciplinarity and value placed on collaborative work, it is also a setting where thoughtful engagement is common practice. I look forward to being part of the engagement activities for which the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development is well known. In the current context, it is especially important to give a voice to expertise and to demonstrate the value of academic institutions for democracy and for liveable futures.”