Food & Business Knowledge Platform
Knowledge Broker
Mariëlle Karssenberg has a Master's degree in International Development Studies of Wageningen University & Research. She designed her Master programme around innovation and the interaction between society and technology. Specifically she has an interest in local communities strengths and capabilities.
For fieldwork in the context of her Master Thesis, Mariëlle lived in and around Hawassa, Ethiopia for 2.5 months. There she developed as a person, a woman, a researcher and where her passion for implementing technologies in developing countries increased. Her thesis "Adoption on and beyond the malt barley fields: A case study on the practice of making a livelihood in Guguma, Ethiopia" reveals three mechanisms which influence the adoption process in Guguma: changes in practices; influence from development agents; and insecurity. These mechanisms show that technology adoption research should not only be concerned with technical aspect, but should also deal with the social aspects happening outside of the farmer fields.
Mariëlle also spent 4.5 months in Vietnam in 2017 during an internship at CIAT Asia. Her internship contributed to cassava seed system research. She assisted with data collection in both Cambodia and Vietnam, cleaned and analysed the collected data and contributed to the writing of a research paper.
In 2019, Mariëlle worked for a year as Junior Policy Officer Food and Nutrition Security at the Inclusive Green Growth department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of the Advanced Master International Development (AMID).
Since 2020, Mariëlle works from the The Broker as a Knowledge Broker in the Food & Business Knowledge Platform where she focuses on the NL-CGIAR Strategic Partnership, the World Food Day and COVID-19 related work.