It is a our huge pleasure to welcome Ms. Jelena Grosse-Bley to the YPARD Steering Committee.
Jelena hails from Hanover, Germany, and currently resides in Berlin during her studies as a PhD Candidate at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Jelena bring extensive international cooperation experience to the YPARD Steering Committee; she has been a frequent visitor to mainland China since her teenage years. After she spent a year in Shanghai as a high school student, she added another few years in different places across Germany over the course of her university studies. While she started out in the big cities, food and environmental issues were part of everyday life in many shapes and forms. Jelena's first master thesis gave her the opportunity to learn more from food producers rather than the upper ends of supply chains more visible to most urbanites. The multitude of challenges to sustainable agriculture were striking, including the question of who would be willing and enabled to carry on farming under these conditions as older generations were leaving the field. Further studies in environmental management led Jelena deeper into specific modes of production that were trying to tackle the socio-ecological crux of sustainable and equitable farming, such as regenerative agriculture. This led to Jelena pursuing a PhD in social and cultural anthropology, deeply intrigued by the intimacy between agricultural producers and environmental changes. While interested in inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives on food systems overall, she is particularly passionate about staying close to the production side in her own research. As such, she currently focusses on debates around crop seed (breeding) and rural meteorological services in the context of climate change adaptation in China.
In the YPARD Steering Committee, Jelena aims to bring attention to helping YPARD Asia-Pacific grow and deepen cooperation with other regions in YPARD. She is also enthusiastic about administrative aspects of running an international organization, and her attention to detail will be well placed to help YPARD advance in administrative matters.
Welcome, Jelena!