Ola Westengen

Professor

Institutt for internasjonale miljø- og utviklingsstudier, Noragric

Ola Westengen is a Professor at Noragric. He does research on food and seed systems, agrobiodiversity; conservation and use of genetic resources; food security and adaptation to climate change; crop evolution and crop diversity as biocultural heritage.

Westengen leads the NMBU Seed System Lab with projects ACCESS and BOLD (links under the Research and project tab below) and co-leads the NMBU Sustainability Arena on Sustainable Food Systems. He is currently the Research Coordinator at the department.

Westengen teaches in EDS306 Foundations of Sustainability Science, EDS352 Agroecology and Development, and several other courses at NMBU. Previous to joining Noragric, Westengen worked in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and served as the first Coordinator of Operations and Management of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault from 2008-2015.

Other roles: Member of the Norwegian Food System white paper commitee and the Danish consultative research committee for development research

Fagfelt
- Agrobiodiversity
- Crop evolution
- Agricultural Development
- Agri-food systems
- Food security
- Crop biodiversity and Seed systems
Publikasjoner
Liste med publikasjoner fra min forskning. (Cristin)
See Cristin link above for (somewhat delayed) overview
Selected books and book chapters:
Westengen OT, Dalle SP, Mulesa TH (2023). Navigating toward resilient and inclusive seed systems Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 120 (14), e2218777120
Wendmu TA, Gebrelibanos TS, Kovi MR, Ring KH, de Boer HJ, Abera, FA & Westengen, OT (2023). "People Gathered by Sorghum": Cultural Practices and Sorghum Diversity in Northern Ethiopia. Human Ecology, pp.1-13.
Makate C, Angelsen A, Holden, ST & Westengen OT (2023). Rainfall shocks and inequality have heterogeneous effects on farmers' seed purchase decisions in East Africa. Climate Risk Management, 42, p. 100556
Makate C, Angelsen A, Holden ST & Westengen OT (2023). Evolution of farm-level crop diversification and response to rainfall shocks in smallholder farming: Evidence from Malawi and Tanzania. Ecological Economics, 205, p.107736.
Iversen, T.O., Westengen, O.T. and Jerven, M., 2023. The history of hunger: Counting calories to make global food security legible. World Development Perspectives, 30, p.100504.
Makate C, Angelsen A, Holden ST & Westengen OT (2022). Crops in crises: Shocks shape smallholders' diversification in rural Ethiopia. World Development, 159, 106054.
Wendmu TA, Cuni-Sanchez, A, Abebe HT, de Boer HJ, Abera FA, & Westengen OT (2022). Cultural Effects on Sorghum Varieties Grown, Traits Preferred, and Seed Management Practices in Northern Ethiopia. Economic Botany, 1-17.
Jakobsen J & Westengen OT (2021). The imperial maize assemblage: maize dialectics in Malawi and India. Journal of Peasant Studies, pp.1-25.
Mulesa TH, Dalle SP, Makate C, Haug R & Westengen OT (2021). Pluralistic Seed System Development: A Path to Seed Security? Agronomy 11(2), 372.
Westengen OT, Lusty C, Yazbek M, Amri A & Asdal Å (2020). Safeguarding a global seed heritage from Syria to Svalbard. Nature Plants 6 (11), 1311-1317.
Westengen OT, Haug R, Guthiga P & Macharia EJF (2019) Governing seeds in East Africa in the face of climate change: Assessing political and social outcomes. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 3:53
Farmers and Plant Breeding: Current Approaches and Perspectives, 1st Edition Edited by Ola Tveitereid Westengen, Tone Winge Routledge FORTHCOMING October 2019
Westengen OT and Fowler C. Climate Change, Food and Biodiversity 2019, in Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the Biosphere. Eds Lovejoy T, Hannah L & Wilson, EO Yale University Press
Westengen OT 2017 Crops in context: negotiating traditional and formal seed Institutions, in Agronomy for development: the politics of knowledge in agricultural research. Ed. Jim Sumberg, Earthscan Springer.
Westengen, OT et al 2018 Access to genes: linkages between genebanks and farmers’ seed systems. Food security, 10(1), 9-25.
Westengen OT et al. 2017 A Climate for Commerce: The Political Agronomy of Conservation Agriculture in Zambia In press Agriculture and Human Values DOI: 10.1007/s10460-017-9820-x
The State of Food Security: From Availability, Access and Rights to Food Systems Approaches. Forum for Development Studies (2016) DOI:10.1080/08039410.2015.1134644
Ethnolinguistic structuring of sorghum genetic diversity in Africa and the role of local seed systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2014) 111(39):14100- 14105
Crop adaptation to climate change in the semi-arid zone in Tanzania: the role of genetic resources and seed systems. Agriculture & Food Security. (2014) 3(3)
Modern maize varieties going local in the semi-arid zone in Tanzania. BMC Evolutionary Biology. (2014) 14(1)
Westengen, OT; Jeppson, S & Guarino, L (2013). Global Ex-Situ Crop Diversity Conservation and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault: Assessing the Current Status. PLOS ONE. ISSN 1932-6203. 8(5). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064146
Westengen O.T., Huaman Z., Heun M. (2005) Genetic Diversity and Geographic Pattern in Early South American Cotton Domestication. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 110: 392-402
Undervisning
EDS 352 Agriculture, Development and the Environment (Course Leader)
EDS 315 Management of Genetic Resources: Law, Policy and Practice (Course Leader)
EDS 303 Introduction to International Environmental Studies
EDS 306 Foundations of Sustainability Science
EDS 430 PhD Course in Environment and Development Studies
Virtual seed academy. Biannual postgraduate courses. 2023 - Ede/Wageningen, Netherlands, 2025 - Makerere, Uganda