VU University: Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM)

IVM’s mission is to contribute to sustainable development and to care for the environment through excellent scientific research and teaching. A unique feature of the institute is our capacity to cut through the complexity of natural-societal systems through novel interdisciplinary approaches.
Being the oldest environmental research institute in The Netherlands (est. 1971), IVM is currently one of the world's leading institutes in sustainability science. With 100 employees (staff, PhDs and Postdocs), IVM has been rated with the highest scores on scientific excellence, and each year we receive over 140 MSc students and we host over 50 PhD students in our teaching programmes.

The institute’s strategy and policies are set by a management team that consists of the IVM director, an Institute Manager, four Heads of Department, and four Deputy Department Heads.