dr. MMAC (Mark) van Ostaijen

Biography

Mark M.A.C. van Ostaijen is as Assistant Professor affiliated to the Department of Public Administration and Sociology (DPAS/ ESSB) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He works as Managing Director of the LDE Centre Governance of Migration and Diversity and is participating in the European University of Post-Industrial Cities.

In his previous research project at Tilburg University, SmartUrbI, he conducted etnographic fieldwork on how 'smart urban intermediaries' make a difference in neighborhoods of Amsterdam, Glasgow, Birmingham and Copenhagen. Before he started at Tilburg University, Mark worked as lecturer and PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) and at the Netherlands School of Public Administration (NSOB).

In 2013 (together with prof. dr. Godfried Engbersen and prof. dr. Peter Scholten) he received a NWO Urban Europe Research Grant on the research project ‘IMAGINATION’ which resulted in his PhD dissertation 'Worlds between words', awarded as ‘Best PhD thesis’ by the Erasmus Graduate School.

During his PhD research he was one of the founders and chairman of the IMISCOE PhD network, an Organizing Committee Member of the Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) conference in Leicester (UK) and a visiting doctoral research fellow at De Montfort University (UK).

Recently, he published a Dutch book ‘Wij zijn ons. Een kleine sociologie van grote denkers’ (Vantilt / Boom, 3th edition), (see here for coverage at NRC, Volkskrant, ND and VN) a Committee Member of the Colloquium Critical and Interpretive Public Administration at the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG), editor of Beleid & Maatschappij and columnist for Sociologie Magazine.