Brussels, Brussels Region, Belgium
Hej! I’m Gin, an adventurer who’s curious about the world and passionate about critical thinking and continuous learning. It is my deep-rooted mission to contribute to a more equal and just society for people around the world. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Social-Economic Sciences from the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and a Master’s degree in International Development Practice from the University of Galway (Ireland). With two years of experience in research, I have worked on diverse topics including women’s empowerment in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), individuals' climate adaptive capacity, discourse on sustainable development goal interactions, and the integration of ecosystems into the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. My research has involved diverse methodologies, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. These include systematic literature reviews, key informant interviews, discourse, framing, and thematic analysis, alongside survey design and advanced statistical techniques. A key aspect of my work has been around a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool to assess the gender-transformative impact of WASH interventions, which I have also applied to evaluate projects. My understanding extends to water security, power and agency, intra-household dynamics, and community participation. Additionally, through my internship at Cloneshouse and coursework, I have gained both theoretical and practical experience in monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL). My interests lie with gender inequalities, water security, WASH, climate resilience and adaptation, and social justice, with a particular passion for applying participatory and co-creative approaches in intervention design and implementation.
Organising a SIWI Seminar Series on Advancing Gender Equity and Gender Transformative Approaches in Water.
Developing and contextualising a Working with Nature (Nature-based, Nature-inspired, Nature-derived Solutions) capacity strengthening package to help national societies, partners, and volunteers mitigate disaster risk and increase resilience through working with nature.
Travelling and volunteering with local sustainability initiatives across South-East and South Asia for 6 months to learn more about different contexts, cultures, and needs - knowledge and experience I hope to bring into my future work.
- Discussing and voting on various issues related to Plan. - Keeping a breast of contemporary issues for Plan. - Preparing presentations and leading brainstorm sessions about past achievements or future ideas of the Governance Working Group that I am part of.
- Member of the Governance Working Group, which strives to make Plan more youth-led and include young people in all its departments and activities. - Supporting campaigns and events. - Contributing to advocacy with policy makers, as well as following up and negotiating with them. - Advising on various themes, for instance grant proposals. - Working together with other young advocates.
Research Assistant to Malgorzata Blicharska, Jayne Glass and Claudia Teutschbein at NRHU - Natural Resources and Sustainable Development within the Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University. Working on the NEXOGENESIS project (https://nexogenesis.eu/) and a newly established project on Nature-based Solutions to navigate goal conflicts between biodiversity conservation and productive land use (https://www.uu.se/en/research/uunicorn/research/conflicts-between-conservation-and-production). - Conducting a study on the incorporation of ecosystems into the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. - Assisting the set up of a newly established research network to work around nature-based solutions to navigate goal conflicts between biodiversity conservation and productive land use. - Writing a short report on governance, knowledge, and justice issues in nature-based solutions: https://www.uu.se/en/research/uunicorn/resources/reports.
Research Assistant to Mats Målqvist at UUniCORN - Uppsala University Conflicting Objectives Research Nexus, an institute for inter- and trans-disciplinary research at Uppsala University. - Creating an annotated bibliography / reader's guide to sustainable development goal interactions: https://www.uu.se/en/research/uunicorn/resources/references. - Conducting a inductive thematic analysis of the most cited papers on sustainable development goal interactions to explore popular discourse, emerging themes, and its implications. - Full organisation of a conference (about 80 participants). - Creating the website: https://www.uu.se/en/research/uunicorn. - Organising meetings and workshops, compiling minutes, identifying action points. - Coordination of the institute's activities and projects in development.
Research Assistant to Sarah Dickin at CHS - Centre for Health and Sustainability within the Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala University. Working on the REACH WISER project (https://reachwater.uk/reach-wiser/) and the evaluation of a development intervention in Bangladesh by Simavi/Uttaran. - Contributing to the further development of a monitoring and evaluation tool to measure the gender-transformative impact of WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) interventions, the Empowerment in WASH Index (EWI). - Using this tool to evaluate an intervention in Bangladesh and to conduct a comparative study in Ethiopia, Kenya and Bangladesh, also including the links between empowerment and water security (analysis of quantitative primary household data). - Creating online resources and training materials to guide people in their own application of the tool: https://washequity.org/ewi/guides-and-instruments/. - Conducting studies on intra-household decision-making, community participation and gender dis-aggregated climate adaptive capacity in WASH. As part of this work, I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya for stakeholder workshops, where I presented the research on women's empowerment in WASH and its connection to water security. Additionally, I shared key findings and resources at the DevRes conference (https://www.lucsus.lu.se/devres2024), contributing to broader discussions on sustainable development.