Ileen is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Water and Climate Risk of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She obtained her Bachelor degree Civil Engineering at the TU Delft and continued there on the master Water Management. During her master thesis she studies local knowledge of farming communities in Southern Malawi in relation to drought forecasting and adaptation strategies. She has worked on several research studies in Southern Africa and collaborated with local universities and NGOs.
Her PhD research focussed on the adaptation dynamics of rural communities to droughts by developing an agent-based model (ABM). She will simulate the interactions between drought risk, its direct and indirect impacts, and how agro-pastorialists respond to drought with adaptation measures.
Expertise
Drought risk and adaptation.
