Anne Loeber

University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Anne Loeber is an associate professor in governance and sustainability at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) and in the department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
Her research explores the relation between knowledge, power and agency in the governance of highly complex societal issues. Insights in how knowledge co-creation and policy co-design may trigger reflexivity and learning she translates into methodologically innovative approaches to policy analysis and evaluation. Her expertise was invoked for (advice on) the evaluation of a variety of experimental or adaptive policy programmes including the Dutch National Initiative for Sustainable Development, the Dutch Delta Programme and, currently, the Inter-Authority Programme on a ‘Vibrant Countryside’ in cooperation with the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
Loeber holds a PhD in Political Science (University of Amsterdam, 2004), based on a thesis on interactive Technology Assessment and its potential contribution to making the “sustainable development” concept operational in public policy and business. The thesis was awarded a second prize in the 2005 annual Political Science Award competition of the Dutch Political Science Association for the best PhD thesis in the field.
For her research on transformative societal change, institutional innovation, and (participatory) governance on (the relation between) agriculture, food safety, public health and responsible research, she received funding in EU FP5 (EUROpTA), FP6 (Paganini), FP7 (CIT-PART) and H2020 (NewHoRRIzon). She is the editor (together with G. Spaargaren en P. Oosterveer) of a book on sustainability transitions in agriculture and food (Routlegde 2011).