I'm interested in everything related to material stocks: what, where, when, which ones, what for, and why??

On one hand material stocks are the physical manifestations of our stuff which provide us with beneficial societal services – hopefully. And on the other hand, their quantities and qualities directly and indirectly cause material flows and the environmental impacts associated with their life cycles. So my research is focused towards understanding the materials that accumulate in society as buildings, infrastructure, products, and other goods, and how they affect and interact with society, the economy, and the environment. I study the flows and stocks of materials in human societies and the mutual feedbacks between material consumption, economic activity, and development.

As ass. prof at Leiden University’s CML, my current research (as of 2024) maps the in-use stocks, their services, and their impacts, and explores scenarios and forecasts of the life cycles of critical materials and construction materials in the global economies, and the societal and environmental consequences of these future trends. This research includes:

• The ERC-funded project Materials-GRoWL (Gauging the Rest-of-World’s Lifecycles of construction materials) started, aiming to fill some of the many blanks in those aspects in cities and regions of the Global South.
• The Horizon Europe CIRCOMOD project, together with many others at CML. In which we model and address the contribution of CE strategies to climate change mitigation across a wide range of materials, sectors, EU countries, and across the world.
• Circular Circuits, focused on developing a fully circular generation of electronics.
• The availability and recoverability of secondary raw construction materials within the European Union with the FutuRaM Horizon Europe consortium.
• And research on the material stocks of the Belt and Road Initiative, floating urban solutions, and much more.

And I teach MFA1, MFA2, and GIS at CML’s Industrial Ecology Master Programme.

Feel free to reach out!