Germany

Runrid Fox-Kämper

Runrid Fox-Kämper is senior researcher at ILS Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development. She trained in architecture and urban design (Dipl.-Ing.). Her research focuses on adaptation processes of the built environment and green infrastructure. As an expert in urban gardening, she chaired COST Action TU1201 “Urban Allotment Gardens in European Cities” and was national coordinator of FEW-meter for Germany.

More information is available here: https://www.ils-forschung.de/index.php?lang=en&s=fox_kaemper&sub

Email: runrid.fox-kaemper@ils-forschung.de

Kathrin Specht

Kathrin Specht holds an MSc in Landscape Architecture and Planning and a PhD in agricultural economics. Since 2018 she is working at the ILS Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development and since 2021 she is deputy head of research group Spatial Planning and Urban Design. Her research interest lies in social acceptability and perceptions of innovations in the field of agriculture. Her topical focus is on zero- acreage farming, urban agriculture and new consumer-producer relationships. She worked on the topic of sustainable food production in Germany, India, Italy and the U.S.

https://www.ils-forschung.de/index.php?lang=de&s=specht

Werner Heidemann

Horticulturist, until secretary of the Westphalia association of allotment gardeners (LWL), including “Landesschule” – a training centre with teaching and instructional gardens (www.kleingarten.de), board member of the national allotment garden association (BDG).

As an expert of gardening he is involved in the “FEW Meter Project”, supported COST Action TU 1201 “Urban Allotment Gardens in European Cities” and conferences of the European gardening association “Office International du Coin de Terre et des Jardins Familiaux” http://www.jardins-familiaux.org/

Stephan Grote

Ecologist, expert advisor at the “Landesschule”, a training centre with teaching and instructional gardens of the Westphalia association of allotment gardens (www.kleingarten.de). As an expert of gardening, he is involved in the “FEW Meter Project”. He is responsible for advising project participants of the Metropolitan Ruhr Area.

France

Baptiste Grard

Baptiste Grard has a master in ecological engineering and a PhD in environmental sciences, which focuses on rooftop farming. The goal of this study was: (i) the re-creation of soil using only urban waste (as soil component) and (ii) to study the delivered ecosystem services by this type of growing system. He is currently a post-doc at AgroParisTech and INRA (French National Institute of research in Agronomy). He is acting as the co-coordinator of a research project called SEMOIRS. This project aims at studying the ecosystem services delivered by urban micro-farms. He is also involved in the Few-meter project.

Baptiste Grard,  Agro Paris Tech, 16 Rue Claude Bernard, 75231 Paris, France

Email: baptiste.grard@agroparistech.fr

Agnès Lelièvre

Agnès Lelièvre holds a PhD in agronomy and is a full lecturer in agronomy at AgroParisTech. Her research focuses on analysing the functioning (on both technical and managerial issues) of urban farms and evaluating the sustainability of intra-urban farms. She is regularly requested for expert advice on agronomic and managerial issues by urban farmers and local authorities. She is also supervising a PhD on the development of an evaluation tool of the sustainability of intra-urban farms for local authorities using participatory research methods and investigating indicators of sustainability adapted to intra-urban situations.

Liliane Jean Soro 

Liliane Jean-Soro holds a PhD in water chemistry and microbiology. Her studies deal with environmental behaviour of metallic pollutants in urban environment (in soil / sediment / dust). The goal is to understand how an element is bound to the solid components of environmental samples (speciation) and the associated mechanisms which influence their mobility and bioavailability.

Béatrice Béchet

Dr Béatrice BECHET is a senior researcher in environmental geochemistry at the French institute of science and technology for transport, development and networks (IFSTTAR), research centre focusing on the city and the territories, transportation and urban engineering. She is currently the head of the Institute for Research on Urban Sciences and Techniques (IRSTV-CNRS, Nantes), after being during 6 years the scientific coordinator of a research team on urban soils at IRSTV.

She has 20 years of experience on characterisation of urban soils and runoff waters, and on transport of pollutants in urban soils, especially heavy metals. Her application fields are stormwater management, environmental impact of landfill and urban allotment gardens. She was a member of the COST TU1201 Action „Urban allotment gardens in Europe“ (2013-2016). She has been participating in a number of national and European research projects in the field of urban soil pollution and Nature-Based Solutions (ANR JASSUR, H2020 NatureForCities, H2020 Urbinat).

Thierry Lebeau

Thierry Lebeau is a full professor at the University of Nantes and permanent staff of the laboratory LPG (UMR 6112 CNRS). His work focuses on the role of microorganisms (especially plant prowth promoting rhizobacteria that produce siderophores) on the mobility of trace metals in soils, and conversely on the effect of trace metals on soil microorganisms (abundance, biodiversity, functions). He also develops processes associating microorganisms and plants to improve phytoremediation performances for soils contaminated by trace metals, herbicides, and polychlorinated biphenyls. He published more than 70 peer-review papers and 9 book chapters.

Dorine Bouquet

Dorine Bouquet has an engineering degree and a PhD in agronomy. Her research studies deal with the development of methods for the in situ sustainable management of allotment soils moderately lead-contaminated and focus on i) in situ evaluation of a crop system allowing to maintain the vegetables production, while cleaning up soil by phytoextraction and ii) lab experiments in order to improve lead phytoextraction by coupling with bioaugmentation. She is currently a post-doctoral at IRSTV in order to continue the in situ gardening experiment on moderately contaminated soils as part of the European project FEW-meter.

Erica Dorr

Erica Dorr has a broad academic background, with a B.S. from UC Berkeley (California, USA) in Environmental Biology and Ecology, and an M.S. from University Paris-Saclay in Climate, Land Use and Ecosystem Services. At the core of her professional interests is sustainability, specifically designing environmentally sustainable and socially just food systems. Currently she is doing a PhD at AgroParisTech researching the environmental impacts of urban agriculture and working towards the development of a simplified environmental impact assessment tool for urban agriculture. Her work has a strong focus on the methodology and tool of life cycle assessment. Some of her current research interests include sustainability science, urban ecology, and industrial ecology.

Poland

Andrzej Mizgajski

Andrzej Mizgajski  is Professor of Earth science and Head of the Department of Integrated Geography at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. He is an author and co-author of over 170 publications in the field of integrated geography, landscape studies and environmental management. Currently he focuses on ecosystem management in urban areas. He has a wide practical experience in environmental management, being appointed inter alia as Secretary of State at the Polish Ministry of Environment and earlier as the head of regional environmental authority in Poznań. Among numerous honors he received a Fellowship from the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He conducts broad international cooperation in both research and scholar organizations. He participates in several international projects. He is a Member of the Advisory Committee of the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE), the Chairmen of the SURE Chapter Central Europe and Member of the Editorial Board ECOSYSTEM SERVICES, Elsevier, Amsterdam.

Lidia Poniży

Lidia Poniży Is an Assistant Professor with a PhD in Earth science at the Department of Integrated Geography, Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Her research focuses on urban social-ecological systems, the green infrastructure of the city, in particular allotment gardens, and recently, the position of urban agriculture in the city system. Her professional interests resulted in participating in several international and national research projects. She is an author and co-author of about 50 papers and other studies.

Privately, she is a lover of mountains, traveling and gardening.

Dr Lidia Poniży, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Święty Marcin 78, 61-809 Poznań, Poland. Email:lidkap@amu.edu.pl

Dominika Dymek

Dominika Dymek is a PhD student at the Faculty of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Department of Botany. Her field of interests includes urban greenery urban agriculture, in particular allotment gardens, and ecosystem services in the cities. Her PhD thesis focuses on the use and directions for the implementation of family allotment gardens in cities, based on Poznań as a case study. She graduated in horticulture with a specialization in Green Areas Shaping at the Poznan University of Life Sciences and also completed postgraduate studies in Spatial Planning at the Faculty of Architecture, Poznan University of Technology.

Jolanta Kijowska

Jolanta Kijowska Is an assistant professor with a PhD in Earth science, at The Jacob of Paradies University in Gorzow Wlkp. Her field of interest concerns the environmental conflicts, natural conditions in spatial planning, and the shaping of the landscape. In 2013, she obtained a training certificate for “Promotion of science: building cooperation with the social environment” from UCIT, Poznan, and in 2014 she received a training certificate under the project “Turn gray to green. Roofs and green walls in Germany as an example of best practice. Project of exchange of experiences for academic teachers, vocational school teachers and green roof trainers in Poland”, from Hochschule Neubrandenburg, Fachbereich Landschafts-wissenschaften und Geomatik, Neubrandenburg – Berlin.

Leszek Bednorz

Dr. Leszek Bednorz is an Associate Professor at the Department of Botany – Poznań University of Life Sciences (Faculty of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture). He has over 25 years of academic and research experience in the field of horticulture and biology. His research interests concern woody plant species in nature and urban greenery, urban agriculture and plant taxonomy. He is an author of about 100 scientific papers.

 

Maciej Bosiacki

Maciej Bosiacki is working at the Department of Plant Nutrition, Poznań University of Life Sciences. His areas of study include: phitoremediation; the effect of organic substance with varying decomposition rates on uptake of cadmium and lead by selected vegetable species; response of selected species of ornamental plants to varied heavy metal pollution levels of substrates; assessments of heavy metal contents in vegetables; optimization of nutrition in horticultural plants; and assessment of suitability of mixed slow-release fertilizers in cultivation of selected horticultural plants together, with recommendations for horticultural practice.

Natalia Chyża

Natalia Chyża obtained her MSc degree in Environmental Engineering at the Faculty of Technology and Chemical Engineering of the Technical University of Szczecin. Since July 2016, Ms Chyża has been the Director of the Department of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Gorzow Wlkp City Hall. Her main tasks are to control compliance with environmental, nature and agricultural conservation laws and to cooperate with the governmental administration, organisational units, social organisations and individuals working in this sector. Natalia Chyża also cooperates with the Regional Impact Assessment Commission in Gorzow Wlkp. for which she prepares and presents reports on environmental protection issues.

Renata Jurkowska

Renata Jurkowska obtained a masters degree from the Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management of the University of Szczecin in Economics. For 12 years she has been working with national authorities. Her professional duties included services funded by European and national funds. From September 2017, she is employed as a junior inspector at the Department of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Gorzow Wlkp City Hall. Her tasks include among others, agricultural and animal husbandry issues, cooperation with agricultural units and disaster management services, dealing with agricultural losses as a result of natural disasters and dealing with issues related to the agricultural census.

Tomasz Spiżewski

Tomasz Spiżewski is a lecturer and researcher in Department of Vegetable Crops, Poznan University of Life Sciences. He holds a PhD in agricultural sciences. His main research areas include: water management and plant growth in field and greenhouse production, energy conservation technologies in horticulture production and biostimulators in vegetable crops production. He is involved in two international and three national research projects. He is Head of the asparagus cultivars collection which include more than 100 cultivars from almost 20 countries. He is author and co-author more than 40 scientific and almost 100 non peer-reviewed scientific articles.

United Kingdom

Silvio Caputo

Silvio Caputo is a senior lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of Kent. He holds a PhD in Urban Design and Planning which focuses on urban resilience. His work is driven by an interest in all dimensions of sustainability and strategies through which architectural design can integrate such dimensions within theory and practice. His research Interests include: sustainable building design and construction, urban resilience, and urban agriculture. He has been involved in multi-disciplinary, cross-European research projects. As a practitioner with more than 15 years of professional experience, he has worked for important architectural firms and subsequently directed his own practice.

Email: S.Caputo@kent.ac.uk

Chris Blythe

Chris is the Director of Social Farms & Gardens, a post he has held since April 2016.  Prior to this, Chris was an Operations Leader for The Conservation Volunteers in the West Midlands.

Chris has also previously worked for the Black Environment Network and Birmingham Botanical Gardens on a number of community food projects.

His passions are community gardens, food and community cohesion.

Victoria Schoen

Victoria Schoen works as the Research Associate on the project at the University of Kent.  She holds a Masters and PhD in Agricultural Economics, specifically looking at the impact of policy change on farm households.  Her interest in urban agriculture began whilst working at the Centre for Food Policy and she is pleased to be working with practitioners on the current project to measure the sustainability of such enterprises.

Email: v.schoen@kent.ac.uk

– LEAP Micro AD Team

Guy Blanch (Lead engineer)

Guy Blanch has over 15-year experience in developing equipment in agricultural and waste sectors and collaborating with anaerobic digestion operators to produce integrated systems.

He has developed many research trial platforms for UK and overseas clients, with commercialisation and production development being the key drivers.

He is responsible for R&D work for LEAP, Loowatt and Alvan Blanch, designing and fabricating maceration, pre-feed, pasteruisation and biomethane upgrading technologies.

Rokiah Yaman (Project Manager)

Rokiah Yemen has successfully managed projects totalling £600k over 3 years, which include collaborative projects for Innovate UK, WRAP, LB Camden, Camden NHS, LSX and SUGI on Micro AD optimisation, environmental education and community engagement.

She coordinates LEAP demonstration pilot sites, planning, project partners, delivery and finance/fundraising. She has developed organic circular economy and micro AD/composting training.

Diego Vega (Product Design)

Diego Vega is a sustainability consultant and process manager for LEED, AQUA HQE, and Living Building certification. He is Buildings System Manager and Commissioning Agent for HVAC, electrical and automation installations required to meet sustainability targets certification requirements. He is also an Experienced Building Physics Analyst, Facade Designer and Parametric Designer.

Marco Fanasca BSc – Control Technician:

Marco Fanasca is an energy engineer with electrical and heating expertise. He teaches electrical power systems for leading Italian learning provider. He is specialised in design and implementation of robust, low-cost control systems for off-grid, hybrid renewable energy systems (solar, AD and microgrids).

Katalin Patonay MSc (Training Coordinator)

Katalin Patonay is specializing in waste management and is news editor for HuMuSz Waste Prevention Alliance. In this project, she is the coordinator of training development and digestate trial delivery.

USA

Benjamin Goldstein

Benjamin Goldstein is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School for Environmental and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Benjamin brings his engineering training and quantitative research skills to bear on challenges of environmental sustainability in the urban realm. As a graduate student, he developed novel methods to calculate the environmental footprints of cities and used these to explore the environmental outcomes of urban agriculture expansion in Boston. His current work focuses on mapping the complex and dynamic networks of corporate actors that produce the goods consumed in urban markets as a means of concretely articulating how urban consumption induces environmental and social change at distal locations. Benjamin’s research interests include: Political Industrial Ecology; Urban Metabolism; Urban Political Ecology; Urban Design; Urban and Regional Food Systems; and Industrial Ecology.

Nevin Cohen

Nevin Cohen is an Associate Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, and Research Director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. His research explores the policies, governance systems, practices, and infrastructure to support socially just, healthy, ecologically resilient, and economically viable urban and regional food systems. In addition to his work on the FEW Meter, Cohen’s current projects include the co-design of an alternative food buying system for residents of social housing; a study of the intersections of zoning, planning, and food gentrification; and research on urban food indicators. Dr. Cohen is the co-author of Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City (University of GA Press) that examines the potential of urban farms and gardens to address racial, gender, and class oppression. He has a PhD in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University, a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Berkeley, and a BA from Cornell.

Email: Nevin.Cohen@sph.cuny.edu

Joshua Newell

Joshua Newell is an associate professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He is a broadly trained human-environment geographer, whose research focuses on questions related to urban sustainability, resource consumption, and environmental and social justice. Newell’s current research can be divided into two primary areas of interest. The first, Urban Infrastructure and Form, focuses on structural features of the urban form (e.g. built environment, transport, energy, and water infrastructure). The second research area, Urban Consumption and Commodities, focuses on the interrelationships between the consumption of consumer products, our responsibilities as global ‘green’ urban citizens, and the role of governance mechanisms and frameworks (including local institutions) in regulating product consumption. His research approach is often multi-scalar and integrative and, in addition to theory and method found in geography and urban planning, he draws upon principles and tools of industrial ecology, and spatial analysis.

Joshua Newell, University of Michigan, School for Environment and Sustainability,  Dana Building, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, US

Email:jpnewell@umich.edu

Erin Johnson

Erin Johnson is the Director of Service, managing the Service Corps. She came to Green City Force in March of 2017 having spent the previous five years at non-profits fighting hunger and poverty, and working towards sustainability in our built environment and food system in New York City. Erin earned her MA at NYU in 2016 focusing on urban agriculture and community development, including a summer in Madrid researching the emergence of community gardens in connection to the urban social movement. After graduate school, she spent a season at the urban farm in Battery Park growing veggies and teaching youth. Erin is a Chicago native, but has become very rooted in Brooklyn through her community garden, volunteering with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, and as a member of her local food co-operative. She holds a BS from Cornell University in beautiful Ithaca, NY, where she studied Design and Environmental Analysis.

Rositsa T. Ilieva

Rositsa holds a MS in Architecture, a PhD in Spatial Planning and Urban Development, and a graduate certificate in GIScience. At present, she is the Director of the Food Policy Monitor initiative at the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, based at the Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy of The City University of New York. Prior to joining the Institute, Dr. Ilieva served as a postdoctoral research fellow in urban food systems at the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School university in New York where she continues to teach and collaborate with the Urban System Lab. She has a track record of international research experience and has worked with leading urban food policy scholars and practitioners at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Cardiff University, Wageningen University, and MIT. Dr. Ilieva holds a Doctor Europaeus distinction and has presented her research at numerous research conferences in Europe and the US and is the author of the research monograph “Urban Food Planning: Seeds of Transition in the Global North”(Routledge, 2016).

Jason “Jake” Hawes

Jason is a PhD student in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Urban Sustainability Research Group with Dr. Joshua Newell, studying the role of decentralized food, energy, and water infrastructure in the design of more resilient, sustainable cities. Specifically, his dissertation seeks to understand Spatial Planning as a refined lens and method for the deployment of green infrastructure and other decentralized infrastructure systems. This work integrates the design sciences and sustainability research, working to understand how the interactions between humans and the world around us are mediated by infrastructures, and how these interactions empower or undermine environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Hawes received a BS in Environmental and Ecological Engineering and MS in Natural Resources Social Science, both from Purdue University. His primary undergraduate research focused on drinking water, investigating recovery after municipal water contamination events in the US and evaluating novel methods of water supply in rural communities in the Dominican Republic. His MS thesis studied agricultural adaptation to water scarcity in the Eastern Snake River Plain of Idaho.

Email: jkhawes@umich.edu

Maggie Israel

Maggie holds a BA from Barnard College in Environmental Policy, with emphases on environmental justice, food systems, and urban agriculture. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on the relationship between urban farms on public housing sites in New York City and public safety, looking at how the farms might have affected perceived safety of residents and actual crime rates. She has been working as a research associate at the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute since October 2018; the projects she has worked on include the Farms at NYCHA evaluation and the FEW Meter project.

Email: lillian.israel@sph.cuny.edu