Corrie Bakels has held the chair in palaeoeconomy at Leiden University, the Netherlands, since 1988. Her specialisations are prehistoric and early historic agriculture, archaeobotany and vegetation history. She graduated in 1978 on an analysis of early farming societies in the Netherlands and Bavaria, Germany. Since then she has participated in many archaeological projects in Western Continental Europe. A synthesis of her work on the agrarian history of the Western European loess belt, 5300 BC – AD 1000 has appeared in 2009. After her retirement, she continued working at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. Her current research concerns: 1. former environments from the Eemian up to the 19th century; 2. farming practices in the past.