Dr. GĂŒl Ăzerol is a policy scientist, concerned with sustainability and justice. She holds a PhD degree from the University of Twente, and MSc degrees in Integrated Assessment from the University of OsnabrĂŒck, Germany, and Industrial Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey.
Her research and teaching experience extends over 20 years, mainly in the Middle East and Europe. She has acquired expertise and recognition in water, energy and climate governance based on local, national and international collaborative projects. A core value in her work is co-creating knowledge with non-academic organisations. These range from local and regional authorities in the North Sea Region to ministries and NGOs in Palestine. From 2016 until 2023, she was the senior editor of Fanack Water, an online platform covering water and climate issues in the Middle East and North Africa.
She supervises PhD and postdoctoral researchers and BSc and MSc students, and teaches courses and gives guest lectures that often align with her research interests. Since 2022, she has been serving as the educational director of MEEM, the MSc programme in Environmental and Energy Management.
Organisations
Dr. GĂŒl Ăzerol is keen to improve the theoretical and practical foundations of policy and infrastructure studies. Her key expertise covers actor-based and institutional analyses of social-ecological-technical systems, with applications in water, energy and climate change. Over the past 20 years, she has participated in and managed various collaborative projects in Europe, North America, Middle East and North Africa, and gained local experience in Turkey, Palestine, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States.
Research interests
- Water management and governance in conflict-affected settings
- Climate change adaptation in rural and urban areasÂ
- Just energy transition and intersectionality
- Transdisciplinary and comparative research methods
PhD co-supervision
- Linde Franken: Towards a planetary just energy transition - A value conscious design approach to solar PV in the Netherlands (ongoing - collaboration with the Section of Philosophy)
- Nof Afghani: Sustainable and equitable access to non-conventional water resources in Jordan (ongoing)
- Anne Ellermann: Participatory and collaborative governance innovations for sustainable and equitable water use in Europe (ongoing - collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering Technology)
- Amro Wawi: Governance assessment of data management and digitalisation in the Palestinian water sector (ongoing)
- Dr. Franziska Baack: Implementing climate change adaptation through mainstreaming and collective action at the local level (completed in 2024 - Â collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering Technology)
- Dr. Juliane Schillinger: "Untangling the complexity of local water management during armed conflict - Comparative case studies from the Middle East" (completed in 2024, cum laude)
- Dr. Adnan Mirhanoglu: "A socio-material approach to water access struggles of smallholder farmers - Co-shaping actors, institutions, and infrastructures in AÄlasun, Turkey" (completed in 2023 - in collaboration with KU Leuven, Belgium)
- Dr. Mariëlle Feenstra: "Gender just energy policy - Engendering the energy transition in Europe" (completed in 2021)
- Latif Mohammadzadeh: Climate change adaptation and farmer decision making in the Urmia Lake Basin, Iran (guest researcher in 2019)
- Dr. CĂ©sar Casiano Flores: "Context matters - Water governance assessment of the wastewater treatment plant policy in Central Mexico" (completed in 2017)
Publications
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2024
2023
2022
2021
Research profiles
Main educational activities of Dr. GĂŒl Ăzerol take place within MEEM, the MSc programme in Environmental and Energy Management. Since 2022, she serves as the educational director of the programme, where she is also coordinating the Rurban Commons and Research Proposal courses and teaching in the Water Management course. She has supervised more than 50 students in MEEM and other MSc and BSc programmes.
Over the past 10 years, she has contributed to teaching in various BSc and MSc programmes within and outside the University of Twente and co-supervised students on various topics related to her research interests, such as urban water management, participatory irrigation management, gender equity in water governance, and climate adaptation in rural and urban areas.Â
Affiliated study programs
Courses academic year 2024/2025
Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.
Courses academic year 2023/2024
Dr. GĂŒl Ăzerol is the project manager for the University of Twente in GOVAQUA (2023-2027), an EU Horizon Europe project on governance innovations for a transition to a sustainable and equitable water use. She is leading the work package on participatory and collaborative approaches and co-leading the workpackage on transitions to sustainable and equitable water governance.
Her recent projects included CATCH (2017-2022) and C5a (2019-2022), EU Interreg projects on climate resilience in the North Sea Region, and in CATCH+ (2018-2021), a spin-off of the CATCH project focusing on the Province of Overijssel. The projects involved close collaboration with local, regional and national authorities in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. In all three projects, she was a work package lead and the project manager for the University of Twente.
She was a co-founder of Palestinian-Dutch Academic Cooperation Programme on Water (PADUCO) that involved universities from Palestine and the Netherlands. The programme was implemented from 2013 until 2020 and funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She served as the country programme coordinator and participated in seven projects, focusing on water governance assessment, climate adaptation in agriculture, and gender equity in water management and research.
Current projects
GOVAQUA (2023-2027)
Governance innovations for a transition to sustainable and equitable water use in Europe
Europe is facing water challenges ranging from water scarcity to degradation of the freshwater ecosystems. These challenges are expected to be exacerbated by climate change, growing development needs, and structural changes in sectors such as agriculture and energy. Overuse and depletion of water resources causes ecological debt, threatens livelihoods, and weakens the European economy. Reconciling water uses and environmental needs in Europe requires a transition towards sustainable and equitable water use. This transition is also needed to reach the aims of the EU Water Framework Directive, the European Green Deal, and Sustainable Development Goals. Horizon Europe project GOVAQUA aims to accelerate this transition by better water governance. The GOVAQUA project will â for the first time â define what sustainability transition means in water governance and create criteria and indicators for its assessment. GOVAQUA takes a close look at the most innovative water governance solutions to find out how they could help Europe to meet its water challenges. The project identifies the good practices related to legislation and regulation, multi-stakeholder participation and collaboration, economic and financial instruments, and digital solutions for information sharing. These practices are systematically reviewed, analysed, and compared â and further co-developed, assessed and validated with key stakeholders in six real-world living labs in France, Finland, Spain, the UK, and Romania, and transnationally between Finland and Sweden.
REACT (2023-2025)
An Urban Water Resilience Approach to Enhancing Climate Change Adaptation in Turkish Cities
The project âAn Urban Water Resilience Approach to Enhancing Climate Change Adaptation in Turkish Citiesâ (REACT) is being implemented within the scope of the Climate Change Adaptation Grant Programme (CCAGP), co-funded by the EuropeAid and the Turkish Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change. Project partners are CSTM from the University of Twente and the Water Management Institute from Ankara University. Within the scope of the project, risks posed by climate change on the water and wastewater sector in Turkey will be assessed using a web-based decision-support tools  developed by the project team. Collaborating with selected target cities, their specific needs will be identified to enhance climate resilience in water and wastewater management, and support will be provided for the cities to improve their adaptation strategies.
DISCO (2024-2028)
Digital Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation
Authorities in the North Sea region need to accelerate climate change adaptation. However, they face various decision-making challenges due to the complexity of data and the necessity for timely and just involvement of target groups. While digital solutions, such as augmented reality, virtual reality and digital twins, have proven effective in converting extensive data sets into reliable visuals and calculations for the development of sustainable and climate-adaptive cities and regions, the successful implementation requires significant investments and strong collaboration and trust among the digital sector, authorities, and stakeholders.
The DISCO Interreg North Sea Region project is a partnership between academic, private and governmental sectors from the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and Sweden, and it aims to enhance the innovation capacities of organisations and citizens to leverage digital solutions for climate change adaptation.
Finished projects
PADUCO (2013-2020)
Palestinian-Dutch Academic Cooperation Programme on Water
Water resources in Palestine are under increasing stress due to a combination of factors, such as Israeli control and occupation, increasing demand, economic development, population growth, climate change, and pollution from untreated wastewater. The Palestinian water sector should transform to meet these challenges. Against this background, PADUCO was established in 2012 by Palestinian and Dutch universities with the objective of contributing to a self-sustaining, self-reliant Palestinian water sector in terms of institution building, resource management and improved service delivery. The two underlying principles of PADUCO are transdisciplinarity that engages universities, government, civil society and private organizations in applied research; and intersectorality that addresses the linkages of water with environment, agriculture, energy, land use and climate change. Within the first phase (2013-2016), the PADUCO team carried out eleven joint research projects and six education-based activities. Upon the successful completion of the first phase, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs approved the second phase of PADUCO (2016-2020), which included a total of 21 projects. CSTM has been the Netherlands country coordinator of PADUCO starting from its initiation, and contributed to six research and capacity building projects on water governance, wastewater reuse, and gender mainstreaming in applied water research.
CATCH (2017-2022)
'water sensitive Cities: the Answer To CHallenges of extreme weather events'.
In the North Sea Region, a majority of the population lives in midsize cities. Due to their scale, limited resources and expertise, the midsize cities face specific challenges to deal with climate adaptation. The CATCH project enhanced the climate resilience of midsize cities in the North Sea Region by demonstrating and accelerating the redesign of their urban water management. Project partners included municipalities, local water authorities and universities from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden. Key activities involved a needs assessment study to identify the current status of the seven pilot cities, the co-creation of a decision support tool by the practice partners and universities, and the formulation of climate adaptation strategies for pilot cities.
C5a (2019-2022)
Cluster for Cloud to Coast Climate Change Adaptation
The North Sea Region is facing a significant increase in the frequency and severity of floods in response to climate change. Flood management approaches need to urgently adapt to this new reality to keep people safe, the environment healthy and our economies prosperous. To respond to this challenge, the project 'Cluster for Cloud to Coast Climate Change adaptation' (C5a) aims to deliver a cloud-to-coast approach for the management of flood risk, known as the C2C approach. Combining the outcomes of seven ongoing Interreg North Sea Region projects, the C5a project will ensure an approach that is both evidence-based and practice-based. Project partners include ten partners from six countries, and the project runs from 2019 to 2022. The project is co-funded by the North Sea Region Programme. CSTM contributes to lead the work package on applying the C2C approach in practice through the seven case studies in Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and the UK.
CATCH+ (2018-2021)
Accelerating Climate Change Adaptation in the Cities of Overijssel, the Netherlands
The CATCH+ project focused on climate change adaptation (CCA) in the cities of the Province of Overijssel, the Netherlands. Collaborating partners were the province of Overijssel, the regional water authority of Vechtstromen, the municipalities of Zwolle and Enschede, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and the University of Twente. The project partners built on the knowledge and tools that they developed within the CATCH project and tailored them to the Dutch context and the needs of the small and midsize cities in Overijssel. Special emphasis was given to the design and implementation of ârisk dialoguesâ as part of the natioanl Delta Plan on Spatial Adaptation. Main activities of the project involved the analysis of different approaches to stakeholder participation in CCA, a self-assessment by cities on their CCA capacity and actions, and the identification of training needs and opportunities for cities towards improving their CCA capacity.
DROP (2012-2015)
Benefit of governance in drought adaptation
The project âBenefit of governance in DROught adaPtation' (DROP) aimed to enhance the preparedness and resilience of Northwest European (NWE) regions to drought and water scarcity. Transnational collaboration helped achieve these objectives by developing better solutions. The project was implemented through collaboration between six regional water authorities (practice partners) and five knowledge institutes (knowledge partners), who integrated knowledge from science, policy and practice.
Based on six regional cases developed by the practice partners, the knowledge partners assessed the governance context of the cases, addressing drought from drinking water, nature conservation and agricultural perspectives. CSTM researchers both coordinated the development of a governance assessment tool and the application of the tool in two Dutch cases that focused on the Twente and Salland regions in the Netherlands.
Address

University of Twente
Ravelijn (building no. 10), room 1155
Hallenweg 17
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands
University of Twente
Ravelijn 1155
P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede
Netherlands