BIOGRAPHY
AJ (Ansje) Löhr has a Master’s degree in Marine Biology (University of Groningen, NL) and a PhD degree in Ecotoxicology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL). She is an associate professor and head of the Department of Environmental Sciences at the Faculty of Science of the Open Universiteit of the Netherlands. She is also a visiting lecturer at the Soegijapranata Catholic University (Semarang, Indonesia) and has worked in varying projects (NWO, WOTRO, ANGIN and for the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water management) in Indonesia over the past 20 years. Her teaching and research activities are mainly within the research theme “environmental pollution” covering aspects of (marine) biology, (eco)toxicology, environmental science, integrated water management, pro-environmental behavior and learning for sustainable development. She is currently especially involved in varying (international) projects related to marine and riverine plastic pollution and waste management. She is also one of the partners in the RISTEK BRIN-NWO project “Resilient Indonesian Slums Envisioned (RISE). Building an inclusive governance with people and water to make social-ecological interactions more resilient to water-related disasters”. An important part of her work includes gaining solutions-oriented knowledge and link it to ways to accelerate effective action. Since 2014 she works in close cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Partnership on Marine Litter (GPML) as the project leader of the Massive Open Online Course on Marine litter and of the Training of Trainers on Monitoring and Assessment of Marine Plastic Litter and Microplastics. She is furthermore involved in the Partners for International Business on waste and circular economy Indonesia – The Netherlands (a project agreement with the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO)).