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Staff Overview

Uta Wehn

Associate Professor of Water Innovation Studies

Uta Wehn

Dr. Uta Wehn is Associate Professor of Water Innovation Studies at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands. A social scientist from the field of innovation studies with a background in ICTs, she draws on more than 20 years of combined experience in research, industry and international development.

Uta leads Action Research in Europe and the Global South on how innovative societal engagement in data and knowledge co-creation & sharing can help trigger transformative changes in science, policy and society towards participatory environmental governance and sustainable societies. She has substantial experience as project coordinator/Principal Investigator of large multi-disciplinary projects on Citizen Science and LivingLabs for water and environmental challenges in which she collaborates with diverse organisations from the public and private sector, academia as well as civil society. Her research has been funded by a range of funders, including several EU framework programmes, the European Space Agency, the Coca Cola Foundation, Mistra (Sweden), and the Dutch government, among others.

Currently, she is the Coordinator of the MoRe4nature project (Empowering citizens in collaborative environmental compliance assurance via MOnitoring, REporting and action; HEU 2024-2027), she co-leads Mistra C2B2 (Co-creating Better Blue; Mistra 2023-2026) as well as CitiObs (Enhancing Citizen Observatories for healthy, sustainable, resilient and inclusive cities; HEU 2023-2026); and she leads the co-design of societal engagement via LivingLabs of MAR2PROTECT (Protecting groundwater from climate and global change effects via managed aquifer recharge; HEU 2023-2026).

She is currently also Visiting Professor of Citizen & Community Science at the University of Sonora, Mexico, where she helps to strengthen the knowledge and skills of academic staff and students of the Postgraduate Programme on Sustainability re. citizen science and Open Science. As the Adlerbert Visiting Professor of Marine Citizen Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2022), she led the uptake of citizen science as a new paradigm for marine research at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and helped to strategically position the Department of Marine Science and its research ambitions and activities from the start of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. This led, among others, to the successful acquisition of the Mistra C2B2 programme (2023-2027).

Uta has co-chaired the global Citizen Science & Open Science Community of Practice (of the Citizen Science Global Partnership) since its inception in 2020. During the development and negotiation process of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, she served as the main representative of the CS&OS CoP. She continues to support the implementation of the Recommendation throughout science systems via contributions to the UNESCO Open Science toolkit, the UNESCO Open Science Outlook and the OS monitoring framework; advice on national (open) science policies; tailored trainings on Open Science and other contributions. Also, she represented IHE Delft at the OECD Water Governance Initiative (2013-2022) and in that capacity, she contributed the development of the OECD Water Governance Principles and the respective monitoring framework. She regularly acts in various advisory roles for international research bodies, funders and policy makers.

She has made over 100 scholarly contributions in peer-reviewed journals, international conference proceedings/reports and book chapters on the topics of citizen science, citizen observatories and community-based environmental monitoring; open science; data and knowledge sharing; participatory environmental governance; stakeholder engagement; co-design methods and LivingLabs; impact assessment; social learning; capacity development; social innovation and water innovation dynamics.  She serves on the editorial board of several journals: Sustainability Science (Springer), Prometheus – Critical studies in innovation (Pluto Journals), Frontiers of Environmental Science.

Publications

A complete list of publications can be found here

Other information

Recent and on-going research projects

 

Recent and on-going capacity development projects

  • CAPP – Community Agency for Pro-Poor Biodiversity Conservation in Zambia (2021-2023) Funder: DGIS. Project Coordinator.
  • WATRA – Strengthening skills development for WAstewater Treatment and Reuse in Agriculture in a recently established higher TVET programme in Jordan (2021-2022) Funder: Nuffic – Orange Knowledge Programme. WP Lead – Business plan
  • ProCAD Colombia – Projects and capacities for adaptation of coastal deltas in Colombia, 2021, Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), Task lead – Knowledge and capacity development needs
  • Chittagong - Chittagong Water Supply & Sewerage Authority - Utility Modernization Umbrella Consultancy (2015-2017) Funder: International Development Association (IDA) and Republic of Bangladesh. Lead for IHE contribution.
  • SUSWAS - Public Private Partnership for increased Access to Sustainable Water services in Rwanda) (2013-2017) Funder: Sustainable Water Fund. Lead for IHE contribution
  • CAPIWUA - Capacity Development for Performance Improvement of water utilities in secondary urban centers in East Africa (2011-2015) Funder: ACP-EU Water Facility Programme.
  • MRC module-based competency framework for IWRM (2012) Funding: Mekong River Commission, 2012.