Carolien's work

Carolien is an academic researcher, focusing on issues of urban development and patterns of food consumption. During her year without money, she took a break from her job and worked directly with the people she made bartering agreements with, which made her year very busy and professionally diverse.

Carolien is an environmental psychologist. She completed her PhD on “The transparency of meat and fish production as a determinant of sustainability in food choices.” For her research, she looked at whether information on the origins of food, the way food is grown, produced and transported has an impact on how people shop.

Carolien works on various projects as a researcher at DRIFT, the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions. One of her projects was to develop and teach a course for the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture. She applied principles of action research: instead of merely telling them, students had to discover for themselves how the built environment determines what people do. And by first becoming aware of their own values, they learned how to evaluate the impact of their designs.

See more here about Carolien's year without money