Heidi
Annala
PhD candidate Work package 3
Promotor
Prof. dr. Arthur Mol
Supervisors
Dr. Judith van Leeuwen
Dr. ir. Bas van Vliet
Who am I
I’m a multidisciplinary sustainability researcher from Finland, currently based in Wageningen. I’m pursuing my PhD in the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University and Research, where I explore circularity through the lens of environmental sociology. Outside of academia, I’m a language nerd, an avid knitter, and the proud human of a goofy 2-year-old Kleinspitz.
What am I up to during ESCH-R?
I belong to work package 3, “How we act”, where I look at a number of hospital practices at the departments of nephrology, ophthalmology, and obstetrics. My focus is on routinized behavior that’s driven more strongly by its context than conscious individual decisions. The theory I work with calls this “social practices”, and in my work I aim to understand both how existing social practices (using single-use disposables) at hospitals work, and how they could be changed for the better.
What do I expect to accomplish within ESCH-R?
I would love to bring the sociological lens to be an integral part of ESCH-R, and in that way further strengthen the solutions and messages we put out into the world. For myself, I’m hoping to learn something from every one of my PhD colleagues and at the end walk away from ESCH-R with a well-rounded understanding of circularity at hospitals.
