DrTomas Buitendijk

I draw on my expertise in the fields of Blue and Environmental Humanities, Marine Social Science, and Energy Policy to address complex challenges in the coastal, marine and energy domains. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I collaborate with a large number of colleagues across UCD, in particular through the Earth Institute and iCRAG, the Research Ireland Centre for Applied Geosciences.

My research interests include:

• Place attachment, place meaning, place identity esp. in coastal/marine contexts 
• Plural and community/stakeholder-inclusive assessment of (cultural) ecosystem services
• Social and cultural dimensions of Marine Spatial Planning, as related to e.g.,
  • Offshore renewable energy development / zoning
  • Marine conservation (including the designation of Marine Protected Areas)
  • Marine sediments and impacts of anthropogenic activities
  • Stakeholder interactions in marine governance
• Experiences of the energy transition, e.g.,
  • Community-based energy narratives
  • Energy justice and the just transition
  • Energy communities, energy citizenship and energy democracy
• Theory and practice of human/nature interactions, e.g., 
  • Human / landscape affects
  • Human, non-human & more-than-human agency in landscape interventions (e.g., Nature Based Solutions)
• Interdisciplinary research

Some of the projects that I have contributed to during my time at UCD include ENACT (2024-), Blue4All (2023-2026), IE-Narr (2023-2025), Taking Stock (2022-2023), Post-Extractivist Legacies and Landscapes (2022-2023), and Ecostructure (2021-2022).