Anouk Mertens

Mertens, Anouk

Position / Title

UARC Consultant

Email Address

anouk.mertens@ua.aw
anouk.mertens@ua.aw

ORCID

0000-0002-3166-7188

Fields of Specialization

Repositories

Last updated January 22, 2026

Biography

Anouk Mertens worked a postdoctoral researcher and project manager at the KU Leuven for the SISSTEM project. Currently, she works as a consultant for the University of Aruba Research Center. As a graduated bio-science engineer at the KU Leuven and having obtained a master in Environmental sciences and management at the Université Catholique de Louvain, she is skilled both in exact as well as social sciences. During her PhD in at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering at Ghent University, in collaboration with the Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (graduated in 2017) she became skilled in mixed-method research approaches with participatory qualitative research methods and the development of quantitative (agent-based) simulation models. Her research interests are in sustainable development in a small island state context, education for sustainable development, and the circular and bioeconomy. Anouk attended various national and international conferences and is also the (co-)author of several research articles published in international peer reviewed journals.

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 21

Metadata only
Turning the Tide: Climate Change, Social Change, & Islandness
(Island Studies Press at UPEI, 2026-02-15) Mitchell, Jean; Brinklow, Laurie; Mertens, Anouk; Mijts, Eric
This collection of essays from islanders around the globe offers a complex understanding of the intersections of climate change and social change on islands. How are the effects of climate change and catastrophic weather experienced and narrated by islanders? What stories need to be told? How do local, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge practices facilitate the capacity to improvise, innovate, and adapt to volatile weather events? How do social relations on climate stressed islands continue to flourish? How do governance structures and issues of sovereignty support and/or inhibit climate and social justice? This interdisciplinary approach foregrounds island storytellers as they convey worldviews, knowledge, and cultural values, beliefs, and emotions that are often missing from climate change discourses.
Open Access
The need to stay connected: Embedding the voices of young island researchers.
(Island Studies Press, 2026-01) Mijts, Eric; Brinklow, Laurie; McDonald, Anne; Hall, Iain; Mertens, Anouk; Singh, Simron; Mitchell, Jean; Brinklow, Laurie; Mertens, Anouk; Mijts, Eric
This chapter brings together the key themes discussed throughout this book. The complex intersection of climate change and social change in islands is a deeply human, social, and cultural phenomenon. Island communities have developed multiple ways of dealing with, coping with, and remaining resilient in the face of major threats. During the conference a special session was organized with an emphasis on embedding the contribution of young island scholars, the ones that will shape the future of island studies. During this session, key themes emerged that resonate with those explored in this book and may help guide the navigation of island and climate futures. These key themes include the need for transdisciplinary island research, and a deeper understanding of the positionality of the island researchers as pivotal players in understanding the complexities of island ecosystems, island metabolisms, island connectivity, and islands' social fabric. The importance of the context rather than the discipline as a starting point entails the need for systematic approaches that engage island communities throughout the research process, and foster peer-to-peer learning among island researchers. As one of the participants stated: we should not become a huge island, but we need to stay connected. Small island sustainability is an issue as complex and diverse as small islands themselves, spanning disciplines, geographies, and generations. At the heart of enabling and ensuring sustainable island futures lies capacity-building, itself a multi-faceted issue and one that demands continued and consistent attention. The need for increasing capacity lies not only in meeting the needs of today, but also in maintaining and growing capacities such that future needs can be effectively met. For this to be possible, new generations of island researchers and practitioners must be nurtured and developed, with the net cast wide beyond those who live and work on small islands. With a focus on The need to stay connected: Embedding the voices of young island researchers
Open Access
The GreenComp Evaluation Roadmap: The case of the University of Aruba RISE SIG - How to Embed Sustainability in Your Curriculum
(2025-12-05) Mertens, Anouk; Mijts, Eric
Open Access
Building sustainability competences in a small island context: lessons from the SISSTEM program at the University of Aruba
(Education for Climate Day 2025, 2025-09-14) Mertens, Anouk
When we talk about building sustainability competences, integrating the GreenComp Framework in tertiary curricula, much of the focus often lies on large countries and continental universities. But what does it mean to integrate the 12 competences for sustainability as defined by the GreenComp Framework in the context of a small island state (SIS)? In Aruba, the Sustainable Island Solutions through STEM (SISSTEM) program offers an inspiring example of how higher education curricula can be designed to equip its students with a sound background in science as well as with the competences to apply this knowledge to address the complexity of sustainability challenges typical for a small island context. https://education-for-climate.ec.europa.eu/community/Day2025group/topic/building-sustainability-competences-small-island-context-lessons-sisstem-program https://web.archive.org/web/20250923124910/https://education-for-climate.ec.europa.eu/community/Day2025group/topic/building-sustainability-competences-small-island-context-lessons-sisstem-program
Open Access
SISSTEM: Leveraging inequality to build a successful and sustainable partnership between a continental and a small island state university
(2025-06-17) Buys, Nadine; Mertens, Anouk; Arens, Patrick; Gielen, Georges; Mijts, Eric
Advancing sustainable development and enhancing the resilience of small islands in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource scarcity relies on state-of-the-art knowledge of technological solutions embedded in local contexts. This necessitates building local and regional capacity, with higher academic education playing a crucial role. In response, the University of Aruba launched the SISSTEM (Sustainable Island Solutions through Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)) academic bachelor's, master and research programs. Given the University of Aruba’s scale and available resources, a strategic partnership was formed with KU Leuven, a renowned university in Belgium, Europe. Literature on North-South partnerships emphasizes the importance of equality among partners. However, interuniversity collaborations often face inherent inequalities in access to resources and scale, which were also evident in this specific partnership. This contribution demonstrates how acknowledging and leveraging these inequalities can foster an equal and sustainable partnership in which the complementarity of the institutions’ capacities is pivotal. Through an explorative case study analysis using semi-structured interviews, we have identified some of the key drivers and barriers to establishing such a robust partnership. Here, we focus on the institutional levers and obstacles that made this partnership possible from the perspective of the larger continental institution.
Open Access
How island researchers navigate the wicked nature of small island research. A conversation continued
(2025-06) Mertens, Anouk; Acevedo, Diego; Arens, Patrick; Becker, Tatiana; Brinklow, Laurie; de Scisciolo, Tobia; Drew, Ryan; Facun, Kryss; Hall, Iain; Halliday, Andrew Mark; John, Nigel; López Márquez, Violeta; McDonald, Anne; Mitchell, Jean; Moncada, Stefano; Noll, Dominik; Richardson, Yolanda; Sultan, Salys; van Veghel, Amber; Werleman, Stephanie; Mijts, Eric
Small islands across the globe face the direct consequences of climate change and alarming biodiversity loss. In this context, islands and islanders are sometimes framed as a “litmus test” or “the ideal laboratory” for experiments to advise larger continental areas on how to address the effects of climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Due to the specific island context, islanders are the primary problem solvers in addressing and mitigating these challenges, and finding ways to adapt to them; however, in the first place, to protect their territories, populations, ecosystems, and cultures. It is therefore crucial and urgent to adopt and integrate inter- and transdisciplinary scientific knowledge embedded within the local contexts. Given their leadership role, island-centred research by the local island-based knowledge institutes and researchers is key. Island-centred research should play a pivotal role in generating contextualized knowledge and solutions, whether or not embedded in reciprocal international partnerships with other knowledge institutes. In this presentation, we will dive deeper into the island researchers’ operating space for such island-centred research, based on insights from semi-structured interviews and interactive sessions with island researchers from a wide range of contexts and disciplines. Our data reveal that despite the many challenges of conducting research from within the islands (incl. availability and accessibility of data, or technical and logistic challenges, funding, etc.), island researchers have found an array of ways to overcome these challenges and to produce valuable and impactful results for their societies and the rest of the world. This contribution aims to be a conversation starter amongst island researchers from insular and continental (institutional) contexts to further strengthen productive and equal collaborations in island-centred research.
Open Access
The GreenComp Evaluation Roadmap: a roadmap for in-depth holistic evaluation of the integration of the GreenComp framework in higher-education curricula
(2025-01) Mertens, Anouk; Eppinga, Maarten; Arens, Patrick; de Scisciolo, Tobia; John, Nigel; Sultan, Salys; Buys, Nadine; Mijts, Eric
Purpose The GreenComp framework identifies 12 competences for sustainability as common ground for higher-education curricula. The framework can be used for self-assessment and the review of curricula. However, a step-by-step method to conduct such a self-assessment is not yet available for the GreenComp framework specifically. Therefore, the authors present the GreenComp Evaluation Roadmap allowing to evaluate the extent to which the frameworks’ competences for sustainability are integrated in higher-education curricula. The application of the GreenComp Evaluation Roadmap to a curriculum taught at the University of Aruba, allows to report on the benefits, limitations and future potential of the approach. Design/methodology/approach The proposed mixed-method approach combines hybrid qualitative and quantitative data collection on the integration of the 12 competences for sustainability of the GreenComp framework in higher-education curricula. The authors showcase its potential through application of the GreenComp framework as an evaluation tool to a science, technology, engineering and mathematics-based bachelor program taught at the University of Aruba. Findings The GreenComp Evaluation Roadmap not only allows for an evaluation of the curriculum and identification of competence gaps. It also supports educators to conduct a self-reflection on individual course(s) and the program as a whole. The paper shows promising results that the roadmap developed could be a reproducible approach. Moreover, it provides guidance to other higher education institutes for self-evaluation and self-reflection on how the competences for sustainability are integrated in their curricula and how this can be enhanced in the future. Originality/value The need to integrate sustainability throughout higher-education curricula is broadly recognized. The GreenComp Evaluation Roadmap contributes to the literature by offering a methodological approach to evaluate the integration of the 12 competences for sustainability throughout a curriculum.
Metadata only
Sustainable Island Solutions through STEM (SISSTEM) Lessons learnt, and the pathway forward
(11/27/2024) López Márquez, Violeta; Acevedo, Diego; Mijts, Eric; Mertens, Anouk; Sultan, Salys; John, Nigel
In 2019 the EDF-11 funded SISSTEM project started at the University of Aruba, an ambitious project in collaboration with the KU Leuven and with the support of UNDP to develop the facilities and programs for STEM education and research. In July 2024 the project implementation phase of the European funded part of SISSTEM was completed. In this contribution we will share the original intentions and the outcomes of the project, as well as an analysis of the critical success factors that contributed to the implementation of the project. The outcomes include two academic programs (BSc and MSc), a series of ongoing research projects, and a series of conferences and publications that contribute to the development of a critical mass of island researchers that support both local and global sustainability efforts and agendas. Throughout the implementation of the project a series of obstacles were identified, such as the complexities of international project management for small island development (including logistic and technical challenges), intercultural awareness management, expectation management, marketing/image management and the complexities of recruitment of students and academic staff to participate in pioneering programs.
Open Access
Dutch Caribbean Research Week 2024 - Aruba, 27 November
(2024-11-27) Abarkan, Abida; Acevedo, Diego; Bonnevalle-Kok, Ruth; de Droog, Mieke; Grêaux, Kimberly; John, Nigel; López Márquez, Violeta; Meijer, Hannah; Mertens, Anouk; Mijts, Eric; Sultan, Salys
Contributions by University of Aruba researchers to the Dutch Caribbean Research week 2024 (20-27 November). Individual contributions can also be found via: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1213 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1423 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1390 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1425 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1426 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1427 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1323 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14473/1422
Metadata only
Education for Sustainable Development in Small Island States at the University of Aruba: Practice and Evaluation.
(SOE Biennale Revolutionizing Caribbean Education, Cultivating Critical Competencies in a Shifting Landscap. UWI-Mona, 2024-07-10) Mijts, Eric; Acevedo, Diego; de Scisciolo, Tobia; John, Nigel; Mertens, Anouk
This panel will focus on different approaches at the University of Aruba for capacity building for internal resilience of small island states and the way in which the creation of a critical mass of local higher educated experts that can create contextually relevant and locally accepted solutions will highly contribute to the resilience of these states. Building upon three papers that will be presented by the panel participants, we will demonstrate that it is necessary and possible to develop and implement impactful programs for Education for Sustainable Development in Small Island States, going beyond the focus on cognitive skills and knowledge. The panelists will present approaches to education in Aruba that stimulate critical sustainability thinking (the Academic Foundation Year, and the Sustainable Island Solutions through Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics programs (SISSTEM)). Second, they will demonstrate how the modules within these programs address and affect sustainability thinking and student attitudes toward sustainability. They will also elaborate on the founding principles and evaluation of these programs utilising the EU GreenComp framework. Altogether, the panel aims to demonstrate that despite the global nature of the challenges we face, contextual embeddedness and recognition of local characteristics and local adoption of sustainability thinking are key to building resilient societies.