mw. dr. F.M. (Fenne) Pinkster

Key research interests:  neighborhood belonging; everyday life in cities; lived experiences of urban segregation, gentrification & concentration of poverty; social mix; loss of place

Short Biography

I am Associate Professor Urban Geography at the department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. What I love about Urban Geography, is that you can encounter the urban transformations and social challenges you read about in text books and academic papers as soon as you step out into the city. Much of my inspiration for research and teaching comes from such everyday observations, in Amsterdam where I was born and raised, but also in other cities that I have visited over the years. 

My research agenda concerns the geography of everyday urban life, referred to as de geleefde stad in Dutch. I explore how residents experience, use and produce urban space, studying the different ways in which neighborhoods form meaningful places for residents (or not) and raising questions about place-based processes of in- and exclusion, feelings of belonging and loss, encounters with difference, and place-making and place-claiming. An important element in my research is how these lived experiences of the city are shaped by - but also contribute to - macro-processes of polarization, segregation and fragmentation of urban space. I have investigated these processes in a wide range of neighborhoods, from marginalized neighborhoods targeted by urban renewal to white working class areas and elite spaces in the city like the Amsterdam Canal Belt, but always focusing on how residents of different positionalities make sense of their urban surroundings and shape them ‘from below’.

My teaching responsibilities currently include the Bachelor courses Introduction to Human Geography and Introduction to Urban Geography, and the Master course on Advanced Urban Geographies. I also supervise thesis projects for Bachelor, Master and Research Master students. I am strategically engaged in our academic program as head of the Education Committee (OC) for our bachelor and master programs in Human Geography and Planning.

News

June 2019: New working paper on resident experiences of territorial stigmatization in the Bijlmer

Very happy that our working paper 'On the stickiness of territorial stigma: diverging experiences in Amsterdam’s most notorious neighborhood' is now available online as part of the Center for Urban Studies Working paper series. It is based on extensive fieldwork in Amsterdam Bijlmer in collaboration colleagues Marijn Ferier and Myrte Hoekstra. You can find the paper here, or feel free to e-mail me for a copy. 

February 2019: CUS seed grant for follow-up research in the Amsterdam Canal Belt

Together with colleague Willem Boterman, I have been awarded a Center for Urban Studies seed grant to continue our research in the Amsterdam Canal Belt. In this study, we will investigate the area's status as an aspirational residential space, questioning how new residents make a place for themselves in this highly dynamic neighborhood that is undergoing both touristification and supergentrification. This study will serve as a 'mirror' for the previous study on how long term residents experience living in the Canal Belt and explore alternative meanings of place. 

December 2018: new publication on politics of place in a 'super-diverse' neighbourhood

Myrte Hoekstra and I wrote a paper on the politics of place around a community center in the highly diverse Van der Pek neighborhood in Amsterdam. The paper can be found online as open access article in Social and Cultural Geography.

April 2018: Organizing AAG workshop on Geographies of discontent 

Together with colleague Myrte Hoekstra, I am organizing three workshop sessions at the AAG 2018 conference on 'Geographies of discontent: loss of place and the emotional ramifications of spatial change'. I am also presenting a paperof my own on territoriality and loss of home.

Onderwijsactiviteiten / Teaching activities 2018-2019:

• Bachelor: Inleiding Sociale Geografie, Basisspecialisatie Stadsgeografie
• Master Human Geography: Advanced Urban Geographies
• Research Master Urban Studies: thesis supervision and urban labs
• Research Master Social Sciences: indivual reading courses & thesis supervision
• Voorzitter Opleidingscommisie Bachelor Sociale Geografie en Planologie
• Head of the Educational Programme Committee for the Master programs in Human Geography and Urban and Regional Planning

Individual thesis supervision (MA, RMUS & RMSS)

If you are writing a thesis in the field of Urban Geography or Urban Studies and are considering me as a supervisor, please have a look at my research page for potentially shared interests and at the list below for some examples of recent thesis topics that I have supervised:

• Annefleur Noom (2016) Resident experiences of territorial stigmatization in Amsterdam and Brussels (RMUS)
• Marijn Ferier (2016) Belonging and use of space in migrant neighborhoods in NYC and Amsterdam (RMUS)
• Rosa de Jong (2017) Consuming or living diversity: middle classes in renewal areas in Glasgow and Rotterdam (RMUS)
• Thamon Blokland (2017) Evaluating favela painting projects in Port-au-prince, Haiti  (MA Human Geography)
• Brian Hinton (2017) Fragmented sense of home amongst young homeless people in Birmingham (MA Human Geography)
• Wesel Brocken (2017) Protests against urban tourism in Amsterdam (MA Human Geography)
• Janne Hogervorst (2017) Experiences of social mix in an affluent neighbourhood in Haarlem (MA Human Geography)
• Brady Rall (2018) Everyday mobilities of young migrants in Boston and Amsterdam (RMUS)
• Jessica Warren (in progress) Mailing practices as neighbouring occassion (RMSS)
• Kamma Winther Kestner (in progress) Lived experiences of informal housing arrangements (RMUS)

Research interests

My research interests include a wide range of questions about how people relate to urban places, focusing on how residents' everyday routines become locally embedded (or not!), how neighborhood enables or limits their opportunities to improve their lives, and how - when neighborhood forms a meaningful place to residents - it is then acted upon. I have studied these questions in different types of neighborhoods (from low income neighborhoods to the Amsterdam canal belt) and for different groups of residents, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Specifically, I have studied...:

• emotional geographies, focusing on the affective relationship between people and places, whereby I interpret neighborhood belonging and place attachment not as a given or fixed, but as a process which may change over time. In particular, I have recently become interested in feelings of estrangement and loss in relation to everyday experiences of processes of urban and neighborhood change, which subsequently triggers expressions of discontent and territorial responses;
• everyday practices & timespace routines, examining the ways in which residents' lives are embedded in the neighbourhood and the wider city, how residents strategically manage their exposure to their environment, the barriers they encounter in navigating the city and the way in which social inequalities become manifest in the spatiality of everyday life;
• politics of place, with a particular focus on neighborhoods as informal territories  (despite the fact that most urban neighborhoods are relatively heterogeneous in the Dutch context). This includes questions relating to unequal power relations in informal and formal processes of place-making in terms of the degree to which different meanings of place are acknowledged and accommodated;
• 'living with difference', investigating how residents in mixed neighborhoods and housing projects experience and respond to living in close proximity to 'others' and studying under which conditions social mix programs can contribute to positive experiences of diversity;
• lived experiences of urban marginality, studying how residents in deprived urban areas experience, negotiate and cope with the marginalized context in which they live. For my dissertation I examined how local social networks in areas of concentrated poverty might contribute to negative neighborhood effects. More recently, I have been involved in research on processes of territorial stigmatization, questioning how residents in areas of concentrated poverty experience and respond to symbolic denigration of their neighborhood.

Current research projects

• Finishing a research project on the lived experience of urban marginality and territorial stigmatization in Amsterdam Bijlmer;
• Collaboraring with colleague Willem Boterman in a research project on supergentrification and new gentrifiers in the Amsterdam Canal Belt;
• Working on a paper about loss of place, building on previous fieldwork experiences;
• Developing new research ideas on the relationship between marginalized neighborhoods and the state, specifically focusing on neighborhood policing in Dutch disadvantaged areas as a particular encounter that mediates the relationship between residents and 'the state'.  

PhD Supervision

- Robin-Jan van Duijne (2017-2020) Peri-urbanization in India, co-promotor

- Myrte Hoekstra (2013-2017) Governing diversity and experiencing difference, copromotor

- Annalies Teernstra (2009-2014) Processes of neighborhood upgrading and downgrading, copromotor

- Doske van der Wilk (2014-2017) Gentrifying public space, daily supervisor

PhD Committees/jurys

- Elise Schillebeekx (2019), Aankomstwijken in Vlaanderen, Universiteit Antwerpen/KU Leuven (promotores: Prof Dr Stijn Oosterlynck & Prof Dr Pascal de Decker)

- Alana Osbourne (2018),  Touring Trench Town: Commodifying Urban Poverty and Violence in Kingston, Jamaica, Universiteit van Amsterdam (promotores: Prof Dr Rivke Jaffe & Prof Dr Michiel Baud)

- Emily Miltenburg (2017), A different place for different people, Universiteit van Amsterdam (Promotores: Prof Dr Herman van der Werfhorst & Prof Dr Tom van der Meer)

En verder...

• maak ik me regelmatig druk over het gebrek aan nuance in het publie debat over arme wijken en de misleidende en stigmatiserende labels die daarin gebruikt worden;
• en klim ik dan ook wel eens in de pen, zie bijvoorbeeld mijn reactie op het stuk Afrowijk in de Groene Amsterdammer (naar mijn mening het zoveelste voorbeeld was van Bijlmer bashing), mijn  kritische reactie op de term 'moslimwijken' in de Trouw en op de radio bij het programma CritiX  van FunX en een recent opiniestuk in het Parool met collega Wouter van Gent over onvrede van bewoners in Amsterdamse tuindorpen, mede op basis van mijn onderzoek in Betondorp.
• ben ik af en toe actief op twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/FenneGeo ;
• schreef ik onlangs een blog over toerisme op de Wallen (zie link hieronder)
• scoorde ik ooit een ikje bij de NRC;
• kom ik als werkende moeder altijd tijd tekort.