Verena Bitzer
Dr Verena Bitzer is an interdisciplinary social scientist working on the nexus of governance and international development.
About
She specializes in the governance of agricultural value chains, which includes research on public-private (or cross-sector) partnerships, standards, and food security. Her work focuses specifically on questions of inclusive rural transformation, referring to dedicated efforts to promote the socio-economic inclusion of small-scale and vulnerable rural actors through strengthening their agency and creating livelihood opportunities.
In addition to her work at ICIS (0.2 FTE), Verena works for the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam (0.8 FTE). Previously, she has conducted research on international development for the Graduate School of Business of the University of Cape Town, South Africa (2013-2015), Wageningen University (2011-2013) and Utrecht University in the Netherlands (2007-2011).
She has lived and worked in the Netherlands, South Africa, Malawi, the United States and Germany.