Circular Economy studies, actions and beyond
About Julie Metta
- PhD candidate in Economics, KU Leuven (due in 2024)
- Member of the Leuven Institute of Mobility (Since 2021)
- Coordinator member of Pop-Machina – H2020 (2019-2023)
- Researcher at HIVA and Cedon, KU Leuven (Since 2019)
Current projects
- H2020 project Pop-Machina (2019-2023)
- Building Capacities and Strategies of Trade Union Involvement in shaping a Just Transition towards a Sustainable and Decarbonised Industry (2020-2022)
- French ANR Scarcyclet (2021-2025)
Past projects
- Putting circular textile into work – The employment potential of circular clothing in the Netherlands (2020-2021) – report available online and a summary can be downloaded here
And about the other story…
Julie Metta is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Economics, KU Leuven, Belgium, conducting research on Circular Economy. Julie’s main research interests are collaborative, behavioural, environmental and resources economics. She is highly involved in multidisciplinary academic projects enhancing sustainable policies. Passionate about sharing and learning about environmental practices, Julie is also socially engaged and dedicated to reducing waste generation and resource consumption, while enhancing civil initiatives.
Her PhD thesis is part of the H2020 project Pop-Machina – to be completed in 2023. In this context, Julie is developing innovative economic models to assess the potential of the circular economy with regard to human components (e.g. labour, skills, redistribution).
After obtaining her Master of New Energy and Climate Change Engineering degree from INSA Strasbourg, France, in 2014, Julie spent 5 years in Hong Kong. First, she acted as scientific officer for the French Consulate, where she promoted France’s actions and policies on climate change, energy and environment among Hong Kong stakeholders, academics, and civil-society. Then, Julie worked on Circular Economy as research assistant at the multidisciplinary School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, Julie founded “Sous les dechets, la plage” which raises environmental awareness and organizes seashore cleanings. She has also co-created and managed the Labdoo.org Hong Kong Hub.
Since 2019, Julie has been based in Leuven where she is highly involved in the local maker community and has co-founded the Labdoo.org Belgium Hub.
Labdoo is a non-profit collaborative social network that brings sanitized second hand computers to communities in need. The computers are loaded with educational applications and sent around the world without incurring any economic cost and without generating additional CO2 emissions to the Planet.