Kees van der Geest

Human geographer who studies the impacts of climate change, adaptation, human mobility, environmental change, livelihood resilience and rural development with a people-centred perspective. He has extensive fieldwork experience, mostly in Ghana (5 years), but also in Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bolivia. He coordinated research in many other countries across the Global South. Presently he is working as senior researcher at United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn. He coordinates the work on «Loss and damage from climate change in vulnerable countries» and leads a 5-year research-to-action project about livelihood resilience in Bangladesh. Kees van der Geest studied at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Sussex. His Master’s thesis and PhD thesis were published as monographs by the African Studies Centre. Several chapters of his PhD thesis have been published in international journals, like International Migration, Environment and Urbanization, Africa and Forced Migration Review. From 2008 to 2012 Kees worked as researcher in the Participatory Assessment of Development (PADev) project at the University of Amsterdam and as research consultant. Among his clients have been the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, the United Nations University (UNU) in Bonn, CARE International, DFID Ghana and the Foresight programme of the UK Office for Science. From 2006 to 2009 he was a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam where he taught courses on environment and international development. Kees van der Geest has also been active as documentary film maker. His first, award-winning, documentary was screened at over twenty international film festivals worldwide. His second documentary received a nomination for the Holland-doc Jury Award of the Dutch Film Festival, and has been watched more than two million times on youtube.