dr. YGD (Yosha) Wijngaarden

Biography

Yosha Wijngaarden is assistant professor of Media and Creative Industries at the Media and Communication department. Driven by insights from sociology, geography and organisation studies, her research focuses on the intersection of the creative industries, social interaction and place. It specifically also includes the precariousness and inequality in earnings, innovation in the creative industries, and working and living in urban settings. 

From 2013 to 2019, Yosha worked at the Media & Communication department as a PhD candidate and lecturer. Her PhD thesis "Places of co-working: Situating innovation in the creative industries", supervised by Erik Hitters and Susanne Janssen, was part of the NWO-funded research project Cultures of Innovation in the Creative Industries. Her dissertation received the 5th Boekman/NWO Dissertation Award (best doctoral thesis on arts, culture and society in The Netherlands and Flanders, 2018-2021) as well as the 2019 NeFCA Dissertation Award (best doctoral thesis in communication science in The Netherlands and Flanders). After finishing her PhD, Yosha was a postdoc and lecturer at ESHCC’s Arts and Culture Studies department. Between 2020 and 2022, she was assistant professor of Media Studies and Creative Industries at Radboud University.

Together with Ellen Loots (EUR) and Arjen van Witteloostuijn (VU), Yosha was involved in an Instituut Gak funded research project on the earning capacity and income position of the creative sector in The Netherlands. Currently, Yosha is, together with Helleke van den Braber (RU) and Kate Oakley (University of Glasgow), working on a project on cultural cooperatives and resilience in the cultural sector.

Yosha has taught extensively on all things creative industries, but also on various social science research methods (qualitative, quantitative, comparative), media theory and sociology.

Many years ago, she studied in Amsterdam and received her Bachelor’s degree in History in 2009 (cum laude), followed by a Master’s degree in Sociology and a Research Master’s degree in History in 2012.