Marjanneke is co-Director of CHARM-EU at Utrecht University. CHARM-EU one of the more than 60 European Universities Initiatives and serves as a testbed university for innovations in challenge-based and transdisciplinary education and research around sustainability. It is an alliance between Utrecht University, University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, University of Montpellier and Eötvos Loránd University Budapest, recently joined by the University of Bergen, Würzburg University, Åbo Akademi University, and Hochschule Ruhr West. Marjanneke represents Utrecht University in the CHARM-EU Executive Board, which is responsible for the strategic directions of all CHARM-EU's educational and research programmes. 

Marjanneke is former Academic Director of CHARM-EU and Utrecht Programme Leader of the first ever joint European Master's Global Challenges for Sustainability that was developed by a European Universities Initiative. Marjanneke played key roles in the establishment of the CHARM-EU Master's and led the development and execution of the Capstone, the final 6 months of the programme in which students across 5 universities work together with societal actors to analyse and address sustainability challenges in Europe and beyond. In 2023, the Master's programme won the very first UU Team Award which enabled the team to apply for the Dutch Education Award issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. 

Apart from her management and teaching roles in CHARM-EU, Marjanneke teaches in courses that are part of the BSc programme Global Sustainability Science and the MSc programme Sustainable Development. In the BSc programme, Marjanneke was coordinator of the track Governance and Societal Transformation. She coordinated the second year BSc course Policy Evaluation and Design and has taught in numerous courses at the BSc and MSc level.

In  2023, Marjanneke received her Senior University Teaching Qualification. She was selected for the Educational Leadership Programme by the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning which she finalised in 2024. 

BSc/MSc supervision

Aligned with her current research, Marjanneke supervises BSc and MSc students in qualitative and/or quantitative analyses on the following topics:

Transdisciplinary research: how to co-create research and societal impact?   

I invite thesis students to study the co-creation of research together with societal stakeholders. While so-called transdisciplinary research is considered a promising way to balance high-quality research with societal impact, there is limited knowledge on how researchers and societal stakeholders (can) manage different interests and perspectives on what science is, how it should be designed and what the outcomes should be. This topic is closely related to the work done in CHARM-EU to design a transdisciplinary team-based doctoral programme. The overall objective is to provide insights on how and to what extent research can be co-created with societal stakeholders, focusing on the challenges, opportunities and boundaries to collaborate with societal stakeholders and produce societal impact while keeping with academic integrity and output. Utrecht University is frontrunner in the Open Science movement that promotes transdisciplinary research and public engagement, which also means it can serve as an interesting case study for such type of research. This topic can also be combined with the previous one by studying initiatives that combine education, research and societal impact. For more information, see https://www.charm-eu.eu.

Transdisciplinarity in challenge-based learning: how to align societal impact with higher education?  

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is an increasingly popular pedagogical approach which connects higher education with societal challenges, develops student transversal skills, and generates societal impact by solving global and local challenges with societal stakeholders. One of the key challenges in successful CBL delivery, is aligning students’ learning goals with the needs of societal stakeholders. Finding suitable societal challenges, organising student/stakeholder alignment, developing relevant curriculum design with appropriate assessment methods, and ensuring satisfactory stakeholder engagement to match learning goals with stakeholder needs are crucial elements to ensure success. But what are the key factors within these elements that lead to success? Theses could be developed around this question, drawing on experiences and lessons learned from Utrecht University and other universities in Europe. Insights from the first ever European Joint degree Master’s program ‘Global Challenges for Sustainability’, developed by European Universities Alliance CHARM-EU can be relevant here, in which the supervisor is involved. For more information, see https://www.charm-eu.eu.     

Policy coherence and (in)equality around the Sustainable Development Goals and/or climate action   

Policy coherence is one of the key implementation mechanisms for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and is also considered crucial to reach the targets set out by the Paris Agreement. Coherent, cross-sectoral policy-making is expected to generate more effective and inclusive policies that address synergies and trade-offs between competing goals and interests. However, does policy coherence ‘work’ for everyone in equal ways? How does policy coherence affect inequality? These questions are severely understudied in the literature, and yet are of particular importance in developing countries. Students are invited to write their thesis around the following questions: What do the political processes for policy coherence around the SDGs and/or climate action look like and what are their effects? What is the level of interest representation of the poorest and most vulnerable, a key target group of the SDGs? (How) are non-state actors (NGOs, businesses) involved in pursuing policy coherence around the SDGs and/or climate action? Crucial to consider is not only coherence in national policies, plans and budgets, but also in development assistance. Students are invited to write their thesis around the topic of a research project that studies policy coherence between Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement at regional, national and subnational levels, focusing on the consequences for inequality. The supervisor is involved in this project which is led by the Stockholm Environment Institute in collaboration with Utrecht University, the German Development Institute and Linköping University. Case studies include the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya and Germany, but work in other countries is highly welcomed. For more information, see https://www.sei.org/projects-and-tools/projects/policy-coherence-between-the-paris-agreement-and-agenda-2030/#overview.