As Associate Professor of Urban Politics and Planning at the University of Amsterdam, I bring together my academic foundations in Anthropology and Political Science to shape a transdisciplinary approach to Planning and Governance. My research is driven by a clear ambition: to make interactions between citizens and the state—whether through protest, participation, or everyday encounters—more inclusive, equitable, and democratic.

I am deeply committed to bridging science and society through transdisciplinary research, engaged teaching, and intensive PhD supervision. I currently lead a major collaborative research initiative with the Municipality of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA), where researchers, civil servants, and citizens collaborate in studying the effects of participation policies, and co-develop strategies for more inclusive urban governance. As part of the NWA-funded project Crafting Resilience, I lead the Community of Practice and supervise PhD candidates exploring how communities and state actors build resilience in the face of social and institutional challenges.

My teaching philosophy is rooted in methodological pluralism and societal relevance. At the University of Amsterdam, I design and lead interdisciplinary method and planning courses, while also serving as Dean of Metropool at the Netherlands School of Public Administration (NSOB). In this program, mid-career urban professionals enhance their capacity to address complex urban challenges through reflective, transdisciplinary learning. I also mentor civil servants pursuing doctoral research, strengthening the knowledge interface between academia and public service. In 2020, Luca Bertolini and I edited a  volume that is widely used by students and scholars across disciplinary boundaries: Seeing the City. Interdisciplinary Perspectives the Study of the Urban (Amsterdam University Press). Together with colleagues of Los Andes University, Toronto University and the UvA, I developed and teach an annual summercourse on Planning for Inclusive Cities at CIDER, Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

My academic trajectory is marked by a consistent drive to innovate. After earning my PhD in Political Science cum laude in 2015, I joined the Department of Geography and Planning to engage students with the tensions between bottom-up civic initiatives and top-down planning logics. My dissertation, praised for its ethnographic depth, won the Van Poelje Prijs for best thesis in Public Administration. I received the prestigious NWO VENI grant for my ethnographic action research on participatory planning conflicts in Bogotá and Amsterdam. In 2023, I was Visiting Professor at CIDER, Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia. My academic work has been published accross various fields in the social sciences; Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Built Environment, Current Sociology, Political Geography, Urban Studies, Public Administration.

In 2024, I was awarded the NWO Impact Explorer grant to actively translate research insights into practice—training professionals, publishing in accessible formats such as the widely used booklet 'Struikelen over Participatie', and engaging municipal councils in reflections on their policies, and contributing to the public debate. The real-world value of my work was also recognized during my Urban Citizen Fellowship at NIAS/KNAW, where my research directly informed Amsterdam’s current participation policy.

Beyond academia, I contribute to shaping national discourse. In 2022, I gave the annual Van Slingelandt Lecture for the Dutch Society of Public Administration entitled, 'Through the eyes of the citizen: critical reflections on the relationship between citizens, the state and public administration.’ This lecture is published in Bestuurskunde (Public Administration), it can de listened to as Podcast, a shortened public version can be found on SocialeVraagstukken.nl. I am Chief Editor of Beleid en Maatschappy (Policy and Society) and a member of the editorial board of Sociale Vraagstukken. I also served on several advisory committees for the Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (RLi).

My mission is to build meaningful bridges between scholars, students, citizens, civil servants, and politicians—to deepen the democratic quality of our cities and expand the ways we learn, plan, and act together.

Research projects & grants

Strengthening Citizen Participation in Amsterdam (2025-2027)

This project is a collaboration between the Municipality of Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). Under the academic lead of Nanke Verloo and Stan Majoor, researchers, students, civil servants, and citizens collaborate in studying the effects of participation policies, and co-develop strategies for more inclusive urban governance. The project is funded by the Municipal Team on Participation and the council of the Municipality of Amsterdam.

Making national participatory policies work locally. Improving the collaboration between citizens and municipal government. (2024-2025)

Two national laws to strengthen the voice of citizens in local decision-making will be implemented in 2024. Research shows that municipalities responsible for executing these laws struggle to include citizens, especially in spatial interventions. The new laws may deepen this struggle but also offer an opportunity to improve the collaboration between citizens and local governments. This project seeks to contribute to that opportunity by exploring how the findings of a VENI-project apply to the new policy context, translate these findings to different municipal contexts, and develop workshops for civil servants and local politicians responsible for executing the new participatory laws. This project is funded by an Impact Explorer Grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO)

Strengthening democracy beyond ‘participation’: informal politics and inclusive urban development (2020 – 2024)

Citizens who experience social and geographic exclusion often have difficulty influencing local decision making on urban planning, and this experience can reinforce dissatisfaction with the democratic system and foster societal fragmentation. Although local governments around the world increasingly seek to involve citizens in decision making, studies show that formal participatory processes still fail to include all citizens. This project turns a lens onto the informal politics by which marginalized citizens already claim their ‘right to the city’, so that those practices can be better recognized by urban planners and their concerns can be heard. How do relatively marginalized citizens informally claim their right to the city in ways that are not recognized by formal participation efforts? How do these informal politics shape formal processes of participation? How can these informal ways be better included in participatory planning?

This Etnographic Action Research project contributes to the scholarship and practice of ‘participation’ . Two contrasting ethnographic case studies of citizens’ politics in response to participatory urban development projects, in the distinct institutional contexts of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Bogotá (Colombia) examine informal politics around the edges of formal meetings, in street-level encounters between citizens and public officials, and in other settings, and how these encounters shape formal participatory processes. The research design challenges two taken-for-granted ideas: that informality in politics is a Southern phenomenon and that citizen involvement is better organized in welfare states. Further, the comparison illuminated how state institutional frameworks variously enable or constrain citizen participation. Using an innovative approach to the methodology of political ethnography, I involve local stakeholders in knowledge production and utilization, to ultimately generate multi-dimensional understandings of participation from below and above. This project is funded by an individual research grant (VENI) of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). 

Urban Citizen Fellow (September 2020 - February 2021)

As Urban Citizen Fellow at NIAS/KNAW I am researching how Amsterdam could re-politicize participation and how conflict and dissent play a role in local democracy. I am working on a study about a participation process in Amsterdam West that has turned into strong resistance from the neighbourhood. This project is funded by the Urban Citizen Fellowship of NIAS/KNAW and the Municipality of Amsterdam. 

Book project City Methods (2019 – 2020) 

In the volume 'Seeing the City. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Study of the Urban' Luca Bertolini and I bring together a wide variety of inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to study the city. The book is part of the IIS series 'Perspectives on interdisciplinarity' and Amsterdam University Press. This project is funded by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS).

Commoning Amsterdam’s Future (2019 – 2020) 

Together with Fenne Pinkster (UvA), Virginie Mamadouh (UvA), and documentary filmmaker Julia Strijland (Momo productions), we assess Amsterdam’s future through the eyes, experiences and stories of Amsterdam citizens from all walks of life. The city of Amsterdam is quickly expanding, posing new challenges to create plans for the future that foster the wide array of interests and dreams of the people of Amsterdam. Strategic plans like the Structuurvisie, Koers 2025and Omgevingsvisiesteer urban planning practices in the years to come. While such planning strategies have traditionally been top-down, the municipality now aims to include bottom-up experiences and interests of various stakeholders like residents, entrepreneurs, and professionals. While projects aim at engaging citizens, we believe that they are 1) limited to the more central neighborhood in the city, and 2) tend to cater to the more affluent citizens who raise issues by themselves and are comfortable speaking in formal public meetings. Our project aims to ‘common Amsterdam’s future’ from the bottom-up by including a group of citizens that has so far remained ‘outside’ of the planning process and wider discussions about the city’s plans for the future. Storytelling workshops result in a documentary that highlights the perspective of citizens in envisioning Amsterdam’s future. This project is funded by a Seed Grant XL of the Center for Urban Studies (CUS).

Master

2022, 2023: 'Research Methodologies I: Qualitative Data Analysis', Master Geography, Master Urban and Regional Planning, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. (coordinator/lecturer together with dr. W. Boterman)

2019 - 2022: 'Planning Research: empirical research methods and techniques', Master Urban and Regional Planning, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. (coordinator/lecturer together with dr. R. Arundel)

2016, 2017: 'Qualitative Research Methods', Master Urban and Regional Planning, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. (lecturer together with dr. F. Savini, dr. A. Zorlu, and R. Arundel)

2013, 2014, 2015: 'Analyzing Identity-Based Conflict', Master in Public Policy, International Relations, and Conflict Resolution and Governance, Graduate School for Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam (lecturer)

2013, 2014, 2015: 'Research Seminar', Master Conflict Resolution and Governance, Graduate School for Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, (lecturer together with Dr. David Laws)

2013, 2014, 2015: 'Thesis supervision', Master Conflict Resolution and Governance, Graduate School for Social Sciences (GSSS), University of Amsterdam  (supervisor) 

2012: 'Practice Seminar', Master Conflict Resulution and Governance, Graduate School for Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam (lecturer together with Dr. David Laws)

2012: Series of lectures on 'Performance and narrative in conflict' , George Mason University, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR), Center for the Study of Narrative in Conflict, (visiting scholar)

2011: 'Short Intensive Course on neighborhood research', for PhD students, AISSR, University of Amsterdam (founder and organizer with dr. Emma Folmer)

Bachelor

Since 2023: 'Introduction to Spatial Planning', Bachelor Social Geography and Planning, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. (lecturer together with dr. Jannes Willems)

Since 2018: 'Methods and Techniques 2', Bachelor Social Geography and Planning, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. (coordinator/lecturer together with dr. A. Zorlu and dr. E. Veldhuizen)

2016-2019: 'Spatial Interventions', Bachelor Social Geography and Planning, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. (coordinator/lecturer together with dr. F. Savini)

2016/2017: 'The image of the modern city', Honours course, University of Amsterdam. (lecturer together with Dr. W. van Gent)

2016, 2017, 2018: 'Spatial Planning and Design', Bachelor Social Geography and Planning, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. (coordinator/lecturer) 

2016, 2017: 'Inequality: policy and conflict', Bachelor thesis project, Department of Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam (lecturer/supervisor together with C. Hochstenbach)

2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015: 'Introduction to Conflict Studies', Bachelor Political Science, department of political sciences, University of Amsterdam (coordinator and lecturer)