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 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 Master course Advanced Urban Geographies. I also supervise thesis projects for Bachelor, Master and Research Master students and individual PhD students. I am strategically engaged in our academic program as Academic Advisor for our bachelor and master programs in Human Geography and Planning.

News

January 2021: new appointment

In addition to my academic work, I am happy to announce that I have been appointed as member of the Programme Council of the Center for Urban Inequality. The center is a collaboration between the Municipality of Amsterdam and the four knowledge institutions UvA, VU, HvA and InHolland. Its aim is 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 will contribute to the Programme Council through my interest in spatial inequalities, urban marginality and neighborhood effects. For more information, see https://kenniscentrumongelijkheid.nl/

December 2020: Home and Belonging in the pandemic city

I have been awarded a Center for Urban Studies Teaching Buy-out grant for my research project 'Home and Belonging in the City under COVID-19'. The project includes a survey, developed in collaboration with OIS Amsterdam, 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 and some of the first survey findings can be found here: https://urbanstudies.uva.nl/content/blog-series/living-in-the-pandemic-city.html In February, I will presenting some first findings from the interviews on Emotional geographies of home in the ASCA lecture series on pandemic cities. 

November 2020: book chapter on Interviewing in urban research

Very happy that I was able to contribute a chapter on Interviewing in urban research to the wonderful new edited volume Seeing the city by Nanke Verloo and Luca Bertollini on urban research methods. See https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463728942/seeing-the-city  for this very interesting collection of methodological chapters.

January 2020: Paper on resident experiences of territorial stigmatization in Amsterdam Bijlmer

Very happy that our paper 'On the stickiness of territorial stigma: diverging experiences in Amsterdam’s most notorious neighborhood' is now published online by Antipod (open access), see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/anti.12608. And for a shorter Dutch commentary about this study, see https://www.socialevraagstukken.nl/het-hardnekkige-stigma-van-de-bijlmer/

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
• Leerlijn coordinator Sociale Geografie (Academic Advisor Human Geography BA & MA)
• Various promotion activities for our study programs, including the Geography minor, Bachelor and Master program

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. 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. I am also involved in a collborative research project on Urban Environmental Justice, exploring the way in which polarization on the housing market excacerbates health inequalities in the city.

Current research projects

• Home and Belonging in the city in times of COVID-19, partially funded through a 2021 CUS Teaching Buy-out grant and incollaboration with the Municipality of Amsterdam. 
• Collaborative project with colleague Willem Boterman on residential aspirations, supergentrification and new gentrifiers in the Amsterdam Canal Belt, sponsored by a CUS seed grant;
• Collaborative project on Urban Environmental Justice in Amsterdam, with colleague Wouter van Gent as principal investigator, funded through the Center for Urban Inequality;
• Developing a new research idea about 'Governing Marginality, Encountering the State', specifically focusing on neighborhood policing in Dutch disadvantaged areas as a particular encounter that mediates the relationship between residents and 'the state'.  This research theme builds on a previous study in Amsterdam Bijlmer.
• Thinking about/working on a paper about territoriality, belonging and loss of place, in which I bring together findings from previous seemingsly contrasting case studies in Betondorp and the Canal District to question the role of class in mediating experiences of loss of place in two very different, but distinct neighborhoods.

PhD Supervision

- Dolly Loomans (2021-2025) Housing pathways of new migrants

- 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

- Thijs van der Steeg (2021), De vergeten rol van de bewoner in het klimaatakoord, Universiteit van Amsterdam (promotores: Prof Dr Arnold Reijndorp & Dr Nanke Verloo)

- 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)

• 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);
• werk ik regelmatig samen met maatschappelijke partners, op het gebied van onderwijs - bijvoorbeeld via scriptieprojecten zoals recent met Ruimte en Duurzaamheid van de Gemeente Amsterdam over de nieuwe omgevingsvisie, en eerder ook AFWC, Stadgenoot en het INTI - en onderzoek, waaronder recente samenwerking met OIS Amsterdam over de gevolgen van corona voor thuisgevoel in de stad. In het verleden was ook betrokken bij projecten voor het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (over het stedelijke vernieuwingsbeleid) en het Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (over leefstijlen en woonmilieuvoorkeuren);
• 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.