Ana Vasques

Dr Ana Vasques is a course designer and developer, programme coordinator, and a sustainability researcher at Erasmus University College (EUC). She coordinates the major on Sustainability at EUC and she has developed and coordinates several other university courses related to sustainability. Ana is a member of the Community for the Innovation Capacity of Lecturers within the Community for Learning and Innovation at EUR. She is also the EUC representative for the Liaison Network on Sustainability at Erasmus University Rotterdam, set up by Mariecke van der Glas, the Sustainability Manager of the EUR. Her research focuses on education for sustainability and on ecological succession and restoration following perturbations.

Ana is DIT’s academic lead for transformative education, and the academic coordinator of the minor Science and Practice for Transformative Change. This minor is one element in the development of new forms of education to foster sustainable transitions in society. As an ecologist and a sustainability scientist, Ana’s main interests stem from the underlying processes that drive nature’s resilience and on the role of human actions therein.

She believes that to take the next steps into ways of life that sustain our planet’s health we must equip future changemakers with essential sustainability competencies. In that sense, transformative education focuses on learning by doing. By exposing students to concrete challenges and focusing their learning journeys on the skills to address them, we can contribute to the development of their competencies to think critically and systemically about complex problems such as biodiversity loss and climate change and to design solutions that produce the necessary action in society at a local scale.

In addition to her work, Ana enjoys spending time with her family and friends, in mindful walking, forest bathing, reading, and creative writing.

Please feel free to contact Ana via email.