Postdoctoral Fellow
serfurth@uoguelph.ca
Dr. Sophie Erfurth conducts research at the intersection of groundwater resource use and irrigation agriculture. Her research investigates the impacts of predicted changes in groundwater availability on smallholder farming communities, associated local livelihoods, and global food security. She graduated with a BSc in Geography from University College London, UK and an MEM in Water Resources Management from Duke University, USA. Using transdisciplinary tools, including Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), her PhD research at the University of Oxford, UK sought to unpack social-ecological drivers of decision-making in groundwater management in fragile political systems. Prior to her doctoral studies, she served as policy officer at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Within the framework of the BMZ graduate programme, she worked as a hydrogeologist for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Tunisia providing technical support on groundwater management to the governments of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
