Zilva van Rossum is a PhD candidate in the departments of Environmental Geography and Environmental Policy Analysis at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds an MSc in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Amsterdam. During her master’s, Zilva focused on biodiversity-inclusive agriculture, human land use, and their implications for species fitness, biodiversity, and associated ecosystem services.
Zilva is particularly interested in the factors that underlie the (spatial) distribution of biodiversity around the globe, and how biodiversity can be protected through governance approaches. Her PhD research investigates the roles of land use, climate change, and policy in shaping biodiversity patterns. As a collaboration between the Environmental Geography and Environmental Policy Analysis departments, the project is strongly interdisciplinary, combining quantitative methods from ecology with governance analysis approaches.
Expertise
Anthropogenic land use, Landscape Ecology, Spatial Analysis
Education
2025: MSc. Biological Sciences, track Ecology & Evolution, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2022: BSc. Biologie, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
