Former team members

Abdulrhman Alsayel

Abdulrhman's current research focus was to discover the connections and tensions between place branding, inclusive urban development, and the creative class theory. Before that, he led the youth engagement unit at UN-Habitat in its Future Saudi Cities Program, in the capacity of Youth and Advocacy Lead consultant. He also worked for the Imam Abdulrhman Bin Faisal University (IAU) as a lecturer in the urban and regional planning department. He received his education in sustainability, planning and environmental policy from Cardiff University (UK) from its School of Geography and Planning.

He is now working as a Senior Urban Planning Leader in Saudi Arabia.

Promotor: Prof. Martin de Jong (ESL/RSM)
Co-Promotor: Dr. Jan Fransen (IHS)

Lydia Baan Hofman - Erasmus School of Philosophy

Lydia Baan Hofman's research interests lied in (intersections between) ecophilosophy, (feminist) science and technology studies and aesthetics. In her PhD project, she elaborated Donna Haraway’s notion of response-ability towards the urgencies of climate change.

In July 2023 Lydia Baan Hofman started working as a consultant at De Wetenschappelijke Klimaatraad.

Promotor: Prof. Marli Huijer (ESPhil) 
2nd Promotor: Prof. Alessandra Arcuri (ESL)

Negar Noori - Erasmus School of Law

Joining a team of urban policy professionals in a ‘Smart City development’ research project, Negar is an intermediate between policymakers and practitioners using her background in innovation management and technology policy. During her PhD, she mapped the Smart City design variables, policies and its development process in a conceptual model through studying the Smart City good practices of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dubai, and Masdar. To develop practical solutions from the results, she formulated the lessons learned from the good practices into innovation policies to transfer to Smart City initiatives. As a post-doc researcher, she investigated ‘How to turn a Smart City into an Inclusive Smart City’.

“The evolution path of Smart City indicates that it will be located in a place that in addition to strong technological stimuli, the human factor is the core in its development. In this sense, many leading smart cities have already mentioned the ‘inclusive’ policy in their Smart City programs. Nonetheless, this transition appears to be an experimental pathway for them due to the ambiguity of the concept of Inclusive in the Smart City discourse. The primary objective of this research is to enhance an understanding of the concept of inclusion and its criteria in Smart City discourse. To apply the result, we aim to work with Dutch cities like The Hague, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam.”

Negar Noori joined RealPars as Senior Operations Lead in 2024.

Abby Muricho Onencan - Erasmus School of Law

Abby has a first degree in law and a master’s in governance and development. She completed her Ph.D. in engineering of water-food-energy systems, at the Delft University of Technology. Her main research interest is the use of data analytics to assess emerging trends and catalyze societal change. At the Initiative she works with Lieselot Bisschop and Yogi Hendlin on industrial environmental harms, specifically those resulting from the production and use of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), in the Netherlands.

“PFAS resist degradation, resulting in unprecedented persistence into the environment and in any living species. Health and environmental related costs of inaction to PFAS pollution, are substantial. Within the European Union, health-related costs are estimated at 52 – 84 billion, every year. My research combines green-critical criminological, environmental philosophical and public health approaches to examine the historical and contemporary drivers and dynamics of industrial environmental harms related to PFAS. My aim is to co-create innovative governance solutions, with the European Union, companies, governments, NGOs and communities, for a more inclusive and PFAS free society.”

Dominika Alexa Teigiserova 

Dominika has a degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Southern Denmark and a PhD from Aarhus University (Denmark) in Environmental Technology and Circular economy. In her Ph.D. she interconnected all three levels of sustainability to create and update the current framework used in food waste valorization, with a focus on biorefinery potential for bioeconomy. Her postdoctoral research concentrates on the circularity of the construction sector. The first year contributes to the TU Delft project Circular Road (De Circulaire Weg), which aims to provide insights into how Infrastructure as a Service models work and uncover the key factors to achieve successful implementation in the circular infrastructure. In the same context, as part of Inclusive Wise Waste Cities and Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity (DoIP) she will provide insights into circularity and sustainability of infrastructure to shape more inclusive cities.

 “I believe that we, as a humanity, cannot reach a sustainable future unless we create inclusive cities that integrate strong sustainability principles. We can no longer afford to look at the system separately and choose which level we evaluate now (social, environmental, economic). We need to use glasses with all lenses of sustainability at the same time. It is a complex task, interconnecting how we manage and valorize waste, integrating it as a secondary resource in the city, ensuring it is environmentally safe, economically feasible, and socially just, while looking into how the system is governed. Governance is an overreaching umbrella under which all sustainability levels exist. My ambition is to look at the system in a holistic way to create an integrated solution to reach inclusivity in a way that moves away from weak sustainability and obsolete systems.”

In 2024 Dominika joined the Manchester Metropolitan University as a Research Fellow.

Stephanie Triefus - Erasmus School of Law

Stephanie’s academic background is in law and human rights, and she practiced community and commercial law in Australia before completing a Master of Laws focusing on human rights at Utrecht University. Stephanie’s research interests include business and human rights, critical approaches to international law, the social impacts of international law and empirical legal research. The topic of Stephanie’s PhD was ‘Participatory rights, international investment law and inclusive prosperity: Re-imagining legal economic systems around inclusion’. 

In 2024 Stephanie Triefus started her position as Assistant Professor at the Erasmus School of Law.

Promotor: Prof. Alessandra Arcuri (ESL)
2nd Promotor: Prof. Jeroen Temperman (ESL) 

Melissa Vergara Fernández - Erasmus School of Philosophy

Melissa has a degree in Economics from Universidad de Los Andes, in Bogotá, Colombia and a PhD in Philosophy from Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her main research interests are in modelling as a scientific practice, particularly in macroeconomics. At the Initiative she was working with Marta Szymanowska and Conrad Heilmann on the philosophy of science of financial economics. Specifically, she was working on understanding the methodological choices made in the use of financial economics models and the epistemic and practical consequences thereof.

“Model users often make methodological choices without being fully aware of their underlying assumptions or their implications. Elucidating these is crucial for a more reliable scientific practice. This is my aim. A reliable scientific practice goes a long way towards achieving inclusive prosperity, if that’s what we’re ultimately aiming for.”

In 2023 Melissa Vergara Fernández joined the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen as an Assistant Professor.

Yannick Wiessner

Yannick Wiessner’s academic background is in International Business. He is interested in foreign trade and especially in foreign direct investment (FDI), most notably in emerging markets. In particular, his research explores how FDI as a foreign impetus can contribute to a host country’s sustainable development, not only in economic terms, but also considering legal, social, and environmental aspects of investment impact.

Yannick joined Nova School of Business and Economics in 2024.

Promotor: Prof. Alessandra Arcuri (ESL)
Supervisor: Dr. Brian Pinkham (RSM)
Supervisor: Dr. Frank Wijen (RSM)

Filippos Konstantinos Zisopoulos – Rotterdam School of Management 

Filippos has a background on the resource-use efficient design of industrial food production chains (PhD from Wageningen University and Research), on communication and valorization activities on climate change mitigation and adaptation (former member of the Secretariat of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security & Climate Change), and more recently, on impact analysis of humanitarian aid projects (former member of the non-governmental organization Movement on the Ground).  
Within the Inclusive Wise Waste Cities project he will be working together with his colleagues and project partners to explore how urban waste management systems can become more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient. His work will focus on developing a theoretical framework to map the “inclusive wise-waste system”. The framework will be translated into a dynamic model to study different governance systems and the consequences of various policy interventions. 

“Considering that designing out waste is one of the three key principles of a circular economy, an inclusive approach towards value creation from urban waste does not only make sense but it is necessary for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals such as poverty reduction and reduced inequalities, efficiently and effectively. My ambition is to contribute with my research to the advancement of knowledge that accelerates the transition towards inclusive prosperity.”