With the growing urgency of conserving and restoring biodiversity, the field of invasion biology is gaining increasing prominence. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) identifies Invasive Alien Species (IAS) as one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss, and since 2025 the Dutch government has been developing and implementing an “attack plan” to address IAS.

Through ethnographic inquiry in the Netherlands, Luuk investigates how Asian knotweeds (_Fallopia_ spp.) become understood and managed as “invasive” in specific contexts through performative practices of valuing and devaluing. He explores how knotweeds establish themselves in landscapes of introduction through their affordances and the ways invasiveness is enacted in practice. This approach counters generic and essentialist debates about what IAS are, and provides detailed accounts of how they come to being, the care that is needed to ‘manage’ or ‘eradicate’ them, potential paradoxes in those practices and other ways of thinking with knotweeds. Ultimately, Luuk’s PhD contributes to debates on the everyday politics of more-than-human belonging in the Anthropocene.

Luuk is schooled as cultural anthropologist and is interested in exploring the interdisciplinary frontiers between anthropology, STS, science communication and ecology.