Dirk van Apeldoorn

contact: firstname.lastname@wur.nl room#25 in caliope local phone 4170 Professional

Hi, I am Dirk van Apeldoorn, a 2nd year PhD-student at the Land Dynamics and the Plant Production Systems group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. I have a masters degree from the same university in Tropical Landuse. My research is on the dynamics of agro-ecosystems and especially resilience of these systems. I use complex system thinking in trying to understand what is happening in rural areas in the Netherlands and Zimbabwe.

outside research

Besides research I spend time on the construction of recumbents and driving these bikes across Europe. Further more I am living with my wife in old villa which takes some time to maintain and take care of a vegetable garden as well. I try to cook a dinner ones a week for the vegetarian commune/food collective who is also situated in the villa.

Santa Fe

It seems that we can have a good time in Santa Fe as most of you like drinking with friends and going out for hikes. Being accepted to the summerschool is a dream come true. really looking forward to meeting you all.

Dan's questions: 1. What are your main interests? The co-evolution of social and ecological systems. Agro-ecosystems are not ecosystems, distributed agency and the degree of openness sets these managed systems apart. On the other hand many processes in agro-ecosystems are governed by intrinsic ecological rates very different from social systems that are far less constraint by space and time.

2. What sorts of expertise can you bring to the group? I have a good understanding of scaling issues and social-ecological resilience theory. (And for those interested in farming systems analysis)

3. What do you hope to get out of the CSSS? First of all interaction with peers in complexity research. Second I would like to have better a grounding of complex systems theory for my PhD-research.

4. Do you have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS? Working on co-evolution of heterogeneous (interaction between social and ecological) systems seems an obvious candidate for me.