معرفی
Johanna Koehler holds the position of Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Governance at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) within the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is also a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Science at VU, focusing on Water and Climate Risk. Additionally, she serves as an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment and Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, contributing to the REACH programme on water security in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. She teaches Water Policy at Oxford and coordinates MSc programmes in Environment and Resource Management and Global Environmental Change and Policy at VU.
Education:
- 2018: DPhil (PhD) in Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford
- 2013: MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management, University of Oxford
- 2011: BA in History and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London
Research Interests:
Her work advances institutional theory of risk and explores pluralist governance arrangements for sustainable water and energy transitions. She investigates risk-pooling mechanisms between governments, markets, and communities, with a focus on Africa and the Global South. Methodologically, she combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, including experiments, to study social and institutional behaviors in environmental governance.
Key Contributions and Awards:
- Co-founder of FundiFix, a Kenyan rural water service provider serving 80,000+ people
- Recipient of the 2018 University of Oxford Vice Chancellor's Innovation Award
- Veni Laureate (NWO Talent Scheme) for her RiskPool project on risk-pooling in water service transitions
- Member of the Amsterdam Young Academy and Academic Editor of PLOS Water
Advising and Grants:
Johanna leads the RiskPool project (funded by NWO; 2022–2026) and contributed to a longitudinal dataset on water governance in Kenya (2013–2016). Her work on risk-sharing frameworks influenced Kenya’s Water Act 2016 and was scaled by UNICEF in Bangladesh. She collaborates with Uptime, a consortium maintaining rural water infrastructure across Africa.
Labs and Teams:
Affiliated with the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), the REACH programme, and the Bosch Academy for Transformational Leadership (2020–2022), which focuses on sustainability and land-use practices in a globalized world.
