Class of 2025
It is with great pleasure that we present the Class of 2025. Every year around 20 PhD-candidates from universities in the Netherlands and Belgium start with our PhD training program. Below the first PhD Candidates of the Class of 2025 introduce their PhD projects to you, throughout this year, more PhD candidates that join our training program will be featured on this page.
Katherine Arena
University of Groningen
My PhD project explores the multi-level governance of the twin transition by focusing particularly on the role of transnational city networks as sites and actors of policy co-creation within the European Union. Using a comparative study of two EU-based city networks, the research will investigate the functioning of EU MLG in these contexts. It will analyze both real and potential instances of co-creation to identify challenges and solutions.
Eva Chavand
University of Groningen
I am a PhD candidate in the Chair Group ‘European Politics and Society’ at the University of Groningen. My research focuses on the dynamics and drivers of discourses regarding minorities, especially Sinti and Roma, at local, national, and EU level. I am particularly interested in the interplay between party strategies, public attention, and policymaking. Across Europe, Sinti and Roma experience diverse social, economic, and political conditions, which shape both their representation and the ways they are discussed in political and public discourse. To analyze these dynamics, I combine qualitative and quantitative methods to contribute to research on minority politics and multi-level governance in the EU.
Cecile Ikink
Erasmus University Rotterdam
My PhD project focuses on healthy living environments and the usage of green space in Rotterdam South. Research has shown that a feeling of ownership and connection towards green spaces increases residents’ active use of those spaces. However, these feelings are unequally distributed between citizens, resulting in an uneven distribution of the positive benefits that are connected to the use of green space. Using a participatory and design focused, action-oriented research approach, this project aims to explore the concept of ownership in this context, and through the development of socio-spatial interventions together with citizens, understand its role in the usage of green space and how to design and govern with ownership in mind.
Rebecca Spruijt
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Rebecca Spruijt (MSc) is a PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research subject is the digital welfare state, especially the intersection of digitalization, personalized services and street-level bureaucracy. Her background is in political science (BSc) and sociology (MSc) and before she started her PhD, she has worked for three years as a consultant on the digital transformation in the welfare state.