Former team members

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.
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.