Leonie Hodel

I am an interdisciplinary researcher and postdoctoral scientist GLUE Lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison. My research focuses on the factors and feedbacks influencing land systems and sustainability outcomes. The primary focus of my doctoral thesis was on understanding cattle ranching and its linked environmental and social impacts in the Brazilian Amazon. A key aspect of my research involves examining how cultural systems influence land use processes, utilizing both deep learning-driven spatial analysis and political ecology theory.

I recently received my doctorate in Science and Policy from ETH Zurich, under the supervision of Rachael Garrett, Jan Dirk Wegner and Johanna Jacobi. I am part of the Environmental Policy Lab, the Agroecological Transitions Group and worked together with the EcoVision Lab at the University of Zurich.

During my doctoral studies, I was a visiting research fellow at the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. I collaborated with EMBRAPA Acre in Brazil and served as a scientific consultant for Evidensia, an initiative from the ISEAL Alliance. Additionally, I interned in the Free Trade Agreements/EFTA Division at the Swiss Secretariat of Economic Affairs to work on sustainability questions and I was an ETH Ambassador in New York, USA. My academic journey also includes a Master’s in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from ETH Zurich where I worked with the Computational Biology Group on mathematical models of lung epithelia growth.