dr.ir. KPJ (Karen) Fortuin

Dr. ir. K.P.J. (Karen) Fortuin is Programme Director Marine Sciences and Senior Lecturer at the Earth Systems and Global Change Group at Wageningen University. As Programme Director she is responsible for the BSc Marine Sciences and the MSc Aquaculture and Marine Resource. Her research focusses on improving interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary competence development in environmental-science education in an intercultural context. She currently co-coordinates a university wide project on implementing boundary crossing competence development in BSc and MSc curricula: Boundary Crossing @ WUR.

For many years, Karen has been involved in the international environmental science curriculum development. She wrote a PhD thesis on “Heuristic principles to teach and learn boundary crossing skills in environmental science education” and published several seminal papers on innovative ways to educate students from different cultural backgrounds to address complex environmental problems.

Karen is a dedicated lecturer. She cares about her students who come from many different parts of the world and she emphasizes the importance of crossing cultural and disciplinary boundaries, when teaching environmental sciences and its system analysis tools.