Peter Hanappe studied electronic engineering at the University of Ghent, Belgium. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on real-time music & sound environments at Ircam (Centre George Pompidou, Paris). When a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, he has worked on new modes of content creation & distribution that involve the participation of (online) communities. 

He now focuses on projects in the domain of sustainability. He was involved in setting up a collective system for monitoring noise in urban environments (NoiseTube) & in building critical components for large-scale climate simulations in collaboration with the U.K. Met Office. Most recently he founded the P2P Food Lab to experiment new technologies for agro-ecology & community-based food systems.

He is currently working on the topic of sustainable, community-based food systems. Such food systems are based on agro-ecological principles. They are also collaborative & decentralized. As a computer scientist, he is interested in the role technology can play in such systems. However, he is aware that technology can only solve part of the equation. That is why he also has a strong interest in the "Commons" as a concept to deal with many of the socio-economic questions related to food systems.