I am an assistant professor at the University of Twente. As a political scientist, I am interested in the question: How to mobilize political will for transitions? Humans are known to be loss-averse and to prefer the status quo over radical and uncertain change. However, to address environmental degradation or mitigate climate change, deep transitions are necessary. Public policies can support such deep transitions, but environmental policies are often contested not despite, but because, we live in democracies. Diverse actors have access to democratic policymaking processes and compete for influence on policy content.
My work is about public policies that gather the support of a majority of actors across political camps and promote societies’ resilience. I analyze political actors’ policy preferences and how preferences converge over time depending on factors such as social influence or diffusion mechanisms. In order to analyse such social phenomena, I am involved in the 4TU Resilience Engineering Centre, which offers excellent opportunities for interdisciplinary research that will bring societies closer to becoming resilient towards future challenges.
I was a tenure-track researcher in the 4TU.DeSIRE programme.