My main interests lie in the topic of climate change, and how migratory birds are able to adjust timing of migration and reproduction to a warming environment. I focus on Arctic-breeding birds, as their breeding grounds are subject to rapid changes in climate warming, in contrast to their temperate and tropical wintering grounds.
I studied Forest and Nature Conservation at the Wageningen University, where I graduated in 2013. During my MSc I assisted in the Arcese Lab in the University of British Columbia, Canada, where I worked on vegetation change under influence of a fluctuating gull population. I participated in a project at the Royal NIOZ on foraging behaviour of Crab Plovers in Oman, where we used UvA-BiTS loggers to track Crab Plovers, while simultaneously measuring food availbillity, in order to make predictions on their foraging behaviour. In the spring of 2013 I studied breeding biology and the use of cattle dung around nests of Black Larks in Kazakhstan.
Since November 2013 I work on the NIOO as a PhD student, where I study timing of migration in Arctic breeding barnacle geese and the influence of climate change, in collaboration with prof. dr. Bart Nolet and dr. Henk van der Jeugd. In this project we intensively collaborate with the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam (IBED), from which we use their UvA-BiTS trackers to follow barnacle geese on their migration.