Marie (pronounced ‘Mari’) directs the WeValue team. She is the one constant factor, having obtained the first funding from the EU in 2008 after discussions with several acquaintances, and since then coordinating the wide range of talented people that have contributed to WeValue’s co-creation through many projects, countries, contexts, (see History). Currently, Marie is a Distinguished Professor at Fudan University, where her team varies from 1-2 postdocs and 2-8 PhD students each year. She is also a part-time Professor at the University of Brighton where she supervises 2-6 project-funded short term researchers, and also works with staff from other departments. Since the concepts and applications of WeValue are so fundamental and underpinning to many disciplines, and worldly uses, Marie sees her role as to maintain a focus on WeValue itself, rather than its many adaptations and uses, and the formalizing and codification of all aspects of it so that it can be understood and used by others as soon and as widely as possible. She thus strategically invests her time to nurture opportunities for this – which usually involves projects developing aspects of WeValue in entirely new areas, repeatedly, so that more can be learned and documented.
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With a BSc in Chemical Physics, and DPhil in Nuclear Structure, I have travelled far on a journey of knowledge discover to where I am now. Looking for more tangible social benefits, I moved from research and publishing in nuclear structure, to engineering related to waste, to environmental topics, to domestic recycling and prescriptive models of it. However, I grew up in several countries, (non-globalized parts), and early on I was interested in the different things that people around the world think are important, which might explain how I ultimately shifted to sustainability indicators, and thus WeValue.
From the physical sciences I clung to concept of validity; in particular unitary validity needed for measurements (of anything, for anything). If local people hold information that is needed for decision makers, then it should be collected/measured in a manner that is valid along every link in the chain until its usage. This principle has guided me through a universe of new learning from many corners of social sciences and design, to the development of what is now WeValue InSitu. This has allowed me to intuitively choose and reject concepts that might be useful, without the rigidity of any single-discipline frameworks, and to require the team to repeatedly critically improve methods and models.
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