She is full professor of environment and development in the global south at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. She is also the Faculty Professor on Sustainability (2019-2024) and leads the programme group on Governance and Inclusive Development, managing 10 permanent faculty members, 3-4 post-docs and approximately 60 PhD candidates. Finally, she is also the Co-Convener of the University's Centre for Sustainable Development Studies, for which she coordinates and leads all related activities, including the recent and successful third annual (virtual) conference in 2019 - which saw over 1900 registrations and participants from over 30 countries. Prior to this, she was professor on Climate Change Policy and Law at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. She is editor-in-chief of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics (IF 2.312) and is on the editorial board of Environmental Science and Policy, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Climate and Carbon Law Review, International Journal on Sustainable Development, Catalan Environmental Law Journal, Review of European Community and International Environmental Law and Earth System Governance. She was lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment which won the Zaved Second Prize. Her books include The Climate Change Convention and Developing Countries - From Conflict to Consensus? (1997, Kluwer Academic Publishers), On behalf of my Delegation (2000, translated into French and Spanish), Our Simmering Planet: What to do About Global Warming (2001, Zed Publishers; translated into Korean), and the ‘History of Global Climate Governance’ (2014: Cambridge University Press) which won the Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) Choice Award in 2015 for 2014 in its history category. She has co-edited books 12 books on climate change, water, forest and urban governance and development cooperation. She has edited 11 Special Issues. Her Google Scholar Impact Factor is 60, with 120 journal papers and more than 14,000 citations. She has successfully supervised 22 PhD students and is currently supervising 25 PhD students in the areas of climate change, forest, food/fish, water and disaster governance as well as in development challenges such as food governance and child marriage.

She has been on the scientific steering committees of international programmes including the Steering Committee of the Global Agricultural Research Partnership (CGIAR) research programme on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (2015-2018); and Future Earth’s Earth System Governance programme (2008-2018). At European level, she has been a member of Science Europe’s Scientific Committee for the Sciences (2016-2018) and of the Joint Programming Initiative - Climate Transdisciplinary Advisory Board in Brussels (ongoing). At national level, she is on the Supervisory Board of Oxfam Novib and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam (ongoing). She was the Vice-President of the Commission on Development Cooperation (2011-2019) and member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (2011-2019), a statutory body that advises three Cabinet Ministers. She was a member of the Board of Research for Global Development, WOTRO/N.W.O. from 2004-2010. She is currently vice-chair of the Curatorium of the Prins Claus Chair on Development and Equity.