Sander Van Der Leeuw
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Sander Ernst van der Leeuw | |
|---|---|
| Occupations | Archaeologist, historian, academic, and author |
| Awards | UNEP Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation |
| Academic background | |
| Education | BA, MLitt, PhD, and MA |
| Alma mater | University of Amsterdam University of Cambridge |
| Thesis | Studies in the Technology of Ancient Pottery |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Arizona State University |
Sander Ernst van der Leeuw is an archaeologist, historian, academic, and author. He is an Emeritus Foundation Professor of Anthropology and Sustainability, Director Emeritus of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and the Founding Director of School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.[1]
van der Leeuw is the author, co-author and (co-) editor of twenty books including, Social Sustainability, Past and Future: Undoing Unintended Consequences for the Earth's Survival, and The Model-Based Archaeology of Socio-Natural Systems and Complexity Perspectives on Innovation and Social Change. His research spans the fields of archaeology, sustainability, urbanization, and has particularly focused on complex system theory, innovation, intervention and ancient and modern interactions between humans and the environment.[2]
van der Leeuw is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,[3] a Corresponding Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1995),[4] a Fellow of the Beijer Institute of Environmental Economics at Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,[5] the Global Climate Forum,[6] and the European Center for Living Technology. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature,[7] a Visiting Fellow of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, and an External Faculty Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute.[8]
Following his secondary education in Amsterdam, he enrolled in a Fulbright Exchange Studentship program at the University of Arizona in Tucson and took courses in Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology and History. Having moved back to Europe after a year, he pursued the degree equivalent of a BA in 1968 and an MA in 1972, and obtained an ABD (all but dissertation), in a double degree program in Medieval history and Prehistory in 1972 at the University of Amsterdam. Following that, he completed his Ph.D. in Prehistory (1976) at the same institution, became a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and conducted research work in Anthropology as well as Archaeology. He also holds an MA from the University of Cambridge.[9][10]
Career
van der Leeuw started his academic career at the Leiden University in 1972. He then held an appointment as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam in 1976, and was appointed as a Lecturer there in 1981. Having held that position till 1985, he next served as an Assistant Lecturer at Cambridge University and was promoted to Lecturer in 1988. Subsequently, he held an appointment as Professor at the Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and joined the Arizona State University as a professor of anthropology in 2003.[8] At ASU, he was appointed Foundation Professor of Anthropology in 2010 and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist in 2014.[11] He held these concurrent positions at Arizona State University till 2021. Since 2022, he is the Emeritus Foundation Professor of Anthropology and Sustainability at the Arizona State University.[1]
van der Leeuw is the Founding Director of the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at ASU and has held an appointment there as the Dean of its School of Sustainability.[12] Afterwards, he served as the Director of the Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative at ASU for more than a decade and was Director of the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems from 2014 till 2021.[1] As of 2016, he serves as the Director Emeritus of Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU.[13]
van der Leeuw was the Secretary-General of the French National Council for the Coordination of the Humanities and Social Sciences from 2001 till 2003. Subsequently, he served as the Deputy director at the French National Institute for the Sciences of the Universe. This was followed by an appointment as the Chair of Archaeology at the Institut Universitaire de France from 2002 till 2007.[14]
