Onderzoeksexpertise: de geleefde stad (thuisvoelen, buurtbinding, politiek van plaats) en ruimtelijke ongelijkheid (segregatie, gentrificatie, kwetsbare wijken, sociale menging) 

Key research interests: geography of everyday life, home and belonging, politics of place, urban inequality and governing marginality.

Short Biography

As Associate Professor in Urban Geography, I am affiliated to the department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies and the Center for Urban Studies. 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 such  lived experiences of the city are shaped by - and 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.

In addition to my academic work, I hold a seat at the Programme Council of the Center for Urban Inequality, which aims to generate new research insights in the persistent and cumulative nature of inequality in Amsterdam and thereby contribute to policy practices that can address these challenges for the city. I contribute to the Programme Council through my interest in spatial inequalities, urban marginality and neighborhood effects. For more information, see https://kenniscentrumongelijkheid.nl/

News

November 2022: Jeroen van der Veer scriptieprijs

Voor het tweede jaar wordt de Jeroen van der Veer scriptieprijs uitgereikt door de AFWC voor de beste Master scriptie op het gebied van volkshuisvesting en wonen. Ik heb de eer deel uit te maken van de jury Zie https://www.afwc.nl/over-afwc/jeroen-van-der-veerprijs voor meer informatie. 

September 2022: nieuwe publicatie over buurteffecten

Voor het Lexicon Nabijheid en Sociaal Werk schreef ik een korte, Nederlandstalige bijdrage over buurteffecten, wat dat precies zijn en waar ze vandaan komen. Hier vind je een digitale versie van het Lexicon en mijn bijdrage.

Current projects

My research focuses on how urban residents encounter, experience and engage with the city and processes of urban change, both emotionally and practically. I engage with these themes through a critical lense, exploring differences and inequalities in the degree to which residents are able to participate and feel at home in the city. Current projects include:

• Home and Belonging in the city in times of COVID-19, principal researcher, partially funded through a 2021 CUS Teaching Buy-out grant and in collaboration with OIS Amsterdam. The project included a survey and qualitative follow-up interviews with Amsterdammers about the way in which the first lockdown has led them to re-evaluate their homes, neighborhood and city as a place to live. A short introduction to the study can be found HERE;
• Residential aspirations, supergentrification and new gentrifiers in the Amsterdam Canal Belt, collaborative research project with colleague Willem Boterman and sponsored by a CUS seed grant;
• Storytelling as a participatory community building projects in disadvantaged neighborhoods, collaborative research project with colleagues Nanke Verloo, Dolly Loomans and Virginie Mamadouh, realized with an Center for Urban Studies XL Grant;
• Urban Environmental Justice in Amsterdam, collaborative research project with Wouter van Gent as principal investigator, funded through the Center for Urban Inequality;

General research interests

In the past years I have explored and collaborated on a range of topics around the geography of everyday urban life, including: 

• geographies of home and belonging, 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 and as inherently political in terms of who is able to develop belonging and who is not. Relatedly, I have studied feelings of estrangement and loss triggered by larger processes of urban and neighborhood change and am interested in the everyday production of discontent;
• spatial practices & everyday routines, examining the ways in which residents' lives are embedded in the neighbourhood (or not!) 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, focusing on unequal power geomatries between residents in shaping neighborhood life and determing its future and exploring which meanings of place are acknowledged and which are not;
• '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. For my dissertation, I examined how residents in an area of concentrated poverty used local social networks to find work. 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, and I have become interested in how residents in marginalized urban areas encounter the state and make sense of government interventions;
• wellbeing and the built environment: Inspired by fieldwork during covid-lockdowns in which Amsterdam residents discussed the various ways in which they experienced their everyday surroundings, I have become interested in discussions on cities as sources of stress versus more positive engagement with the urban built environment and how this might influence mental wellbeing, exploring what type of places in the city might function as 'therapeutic' places. I hope to expand this as a research idea in the coming years. 

The following Academic publications are indicative for my work, For a more extensive list of my work, see 'Publicaties'.

Pinkster, F. M., Ferier, M. S., & Hoekstra, M. S. (2020). On the Stickiness of Territorial Stigma: Diverging Experiences in Amsterdam's Most Notorious Neighbourhood. Antipode, 52(2), 522-541. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12608 

Pinkster, F. M., & Boterman, W. R. (2017). When the spell is broken: gentrification, urban tourism and privileged discontent in the Amsterdam canal district. Cultural Geographies, 24(3), 457-472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474017706176 

Pinkster, F. M. (2016). Narratives of neighbourhood change and loss of belonging in an urban garden village. Social & Cultural Geography, 17(7), 871-891. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1139169

Pinkster, F. M. (2014). "I Just Live Here": Everyday Practices of Disaffiliation of Middle-class Households in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods. Urban Studies, 51(4), 810-826. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098013489738

Nederlandstalige publicaties:

• Pinkster, F. M. (2022). Buurteffecten. In L. Veldboer, & R. Engbersen (Eds.), Lexicon Nabijheid en Sociaal Werk (pp. 101-105). MOVISIE. 
• Pinkster, F. M. (2021). Strijd om de ruimte. Sprank, 19-22. 
• Pinkster, F., Ferier, M., & Hoekstra, M. (2019). Het hardnekkige stigma van de Bijlmer. Web publication/site, Sociale Vraagstukken.
• Pinkster, F. M., & Boterman, W. R. (2019). Amsterdammers zijn het zat: wonen in een pretpark. Geografie, 28(2), 17-19. 
• Pinkster, F. M. (2017). De (on)zin van gemengde wijken. Geografie, webpublicatie 

My teaching responsibilities range from large-scale, first year Bachelor courses to individual thesis supervision at Bachelor, Master and Research Master level. I supervise PhD students and am strategically engaged in our academic program as Academic Advisor for our bachelor and master programs in Human Geography and Planning. 

• Bachelor Sociale Geografie & Planologie: Inleiding Sociale Geografie, Seminar Stadsgeografie, scriptiebegeleiding
• Master Human Geography: Advanced Urban Geographies, thesis supervision
• Research Master Urban Studies: thesis supervision & urban labs
• Research Master Social Sciences: indivual reading courses & thesis supervision
• Leerlijn coordinator Sociale Geografie (Academic Advisor Human Geography BA & MA)

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. Some examples of thesis topics that I have supervised:

• Rosa de Jong (2017) Consuming or living diversity: middle classes in renewal areas in Glasgow and Rotterdam (RMUS)
• Brian Hinton (2017) Fragmented sense of home amongst young homeless people in Birmingham (MA Human Geography)
• Brady Rall (2018) Everyday mobilities of young migrants in Boston and Amsterdam (RMUS)
• Jessica Warren (2019) The package next door. Neighboring in a dense, diverse setting (RMSS, cum laude)
• Kay Mars (2019) Feeling home in a 'straight' city:  everyday experiences of hetero- and homonormativity by young gay and bisexual men in Porto Alegre, Brazil (MA Human Geography)
• Angie Murphy (2019) Art as opportunity: can refugees develop a sense of belonging and inclusion through collective art projects? (MA Human Geography)
• Tessa Hartley (2020) Reading a changing urban landscape: A biography of an intersection in Amsterdam Noord (MA Human Geography, cum laude, FMG thesis prize)
• Emma Adriaansz (2020) Uit het lood. De casus van ongelijke verdeling van vervuild water in Amsterdam Noord (MA Human Geography, zie ook Rooilijn)
• Alexandra Giannopoulou (2021) Remote work. Exploring the geographies of digital freelance workers in Athens (MA Human geography, cum laude)
• Barbara Palomino Baez De Oliviera Soares (2021) 'We are not for sale'. Financialization of affordable rental housing and its impact on residents (MA Human Geography)

PhD Supervision

• Dolly Loomans (2021-2025) Housing pathways of new migrants, promotor
• Robin-Jan van Duijne (2017-2020) Peri-urbanization in India, co-promotor
• Myrte Hoekstra (2013-2017) Governing diversity and experiencing difference, co-promotor
• Annalies Teernstra (2009-2014) Processes of neighborhood upgrading and downgrading, co-promotor
• Doske van der Wilk (2014-2017) Gentrifying public space, daily supervisor

PhD Committees

Thijs van der Steeg (2022) De vergeten rol van de bewoner in het klimaatakoord, Universiteit van Amsterdam (promotores: Prof Dr Arnold Reijndorp & Dr Nanke Verloo)

Henk Huisjes (2021) Ward, web and world. Geopolitical outlooks of and for the Dutch police, Universiteit van Amsterdam (promotores: Prof. Dr. Robert Kloosterman & Dr. Virginie Mamadouh)

Gijs Custers (2021) The new divided city, Erasmus Universiteit (promotor: prof. dr. Godfried Engbersen)

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)

Maatschappelijke activiteiten

• Sinds 2021 ben ik namens de UvA lid van de programmaraad van het Kenniscentrum Ongelijkheid. Vanuit mijn expertise op het gebied van sociale en ruimtelijke ongelijkheid kan ik zo een bijdrage leveren aan het beter begrijpen en het tegengaan van groeiende tegenstellingen in de stad. In het tjdschrift Sprank verscheen in 2021 een interview over hoe ik als geograaf naar deze vraagstukken kijk, zie https://sprankmagazine.nl/strijd-om-de-ruimte/ 
• Ik ben sinds 2021 jurylid voor de Jeroen van der Veer scriptieprijs voor Wonen en Volkshuisvesting.

Daarnaast....

• werk ik regelmatig samen met maatschappelijke partners, op het gebied van onderwijs en onderzoek, waaronder scriptieprojecten met Ruimte en Duurzaamheid van de Gemeente Amsterdam, AFWC, Stadgenoot en het INTI en onderzoeksprojecten met OIS Amsterdam over de gevolgen van corona voor thuisgevoel in de stad en in het verleden met het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (over het stedelijke vernieuwingsbeleid) en het Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (over leefstijlen en woonmilieuvoorkeuren);
• ben ik regelmatig betrokken bij expertbijeenkomsten en wetenschappelijke begeleidingscommissies voor beleid en maatschappelijk onderzoek, bijvoorbeeld voor RIVM, de Gemeente Amsterdam (Strategieteam, Ruimte en Duurzaamheid), de Gemeente Almere, het Ministerie van Binnenlandse zaken en Platform31;
• vind ik het belangrijk om via mijn onderzoek een bijdrage te leveren aan het maatschappelijke debat over de toekomst van Nederlandse steden, bijvoorbeeld over de (on)zin van gemengde wijken (in Geografie), kwetsbare wijken (in Trouw), de lokale gevolgen van toerisme (in Parool)  en onvrede van bewoners in Amsterdamse tuindorpen (in Parool, met collega Wouter van Gent);
• stoor ik me aan het gebrek aan nuance in het publie debat over arme wijken en de misleidende en stigmatiserende labels die daarin gebruikt worden. En klim dan ook wel eens in de pen, zie bijvoorbeeld ons artikel in Sociale Vraagstukken over de Bijlmer, mijn bijdrage aan een AT5-debat over Zuidoost, en eerdere kritische reacties op het stuk Afrowijk in de Groene Amsterdammer en gebruik van de term 'moslimwijken' in Trouw en op de radio bij het programma CritiX  van FunX;
• scoorde ik ooit een ikje bij de NRC.

Zie hieronder enkele korte Nederlandstalige artikelen over mijn onderzoek: