Diane

Kapgen

Diane Kapgen studied African Development Studies in Geography and Culture and Society in Africa (BA) at the University of Bayreuth, and obtained a Master’s in Population and Development Sciences from the University of Brussels (ULB). In 2019, Diane defended her PhD thesis at the Center for Studies on International Cooperation and Development at the ULB. Her PhD thesis explores the process of agroecological transitions in rural Burkina Faso in a developing cooperation context, so as to understand how and why adoptions and adaptations of agroecologically-based development programs affect smallholder farmers’ livelihoods.

In 2018, Diane joined the Sustainable Food Practices project (food.uni.lu) within the Institute for History (https://history.uni.lu/), where she contributes to analysing Luxembourg’s food system and establishing pathways towards more sustainability. She strives to analyse questions evolving from the global food system, regional and rural development, as well as the sustainability debate beyond narrow academic disciplines, in order to include civil society, political and economic actors from different spheres and emphasise people’s own viewpoints.

Diane’s research is based on interdisciplinary and qualitative field research. During her research career, she carried out in-depth empirical field research in different cultural settings, including Burkina Faso, Benin, Ethiopia, Germany, France and Luxembourg.