Jan Boersema

Professor Jan J. Boersema (1947) is professor of Principles of Environmental Sciences at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University. He studied biology at the University of Groningen, and at the same university gained his PhD in theology with his thesis The Torah and the Stoics on Humankind and Nature (Brill, Leiden). He has been a lecturer at Groningen University, a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and is former secretary-general of the Council for the Environment at the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. In 2009-2010 he was a fellow of the University of Cambridge. In 2014-2016 he was research fellow at the Van Raalte Institute, Hope College, Holland MI. His current research relates to the question: how green is progress? In this he examines the issues from a philosophical, religious and historical perspective. Boersema was editor-in-chief of a Dutch textbook Basisboek Milieukunde (Boom, Amsterdam). He was editor of Environmental Values, and since 2002 has been editor-in-chief of the Journal of Integrated Environmental Sciences and the textbook Principles of Environmental Sciences (Springer, Berlin 2009). His most recent book is The Survival of Easter Island. Dwindling Resources and Cultural Resilience (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Boersema is an avid twitcher and photogapher.