Radboud University Nijmegen (RUN), Department of Political Science and Public Administration, The Netherlands.
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen is one of the leading academic communities in The Netherlands. Situated in the oldest Dutch city, it has nine faculties and 17.500 students in 107 study programmes. It is a well-established centre for innovative, fundamental research. The research activities for the project will be conducted by the Department of Political Science and Public Administration within the Nijmegen School of Management, which has a combination of expertise on governance and civil society, unique to The Netherlands. The department’s research programme “Shifts in Government and Governance” focuses on changes and innovations in systems of governance and administration. It combines different disciplines such as political science, public administration, organisational theory, economics and gender studies, using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. It has allowed the department to set up pioneering research that brings together different disciplinary and thematic perspectives.
Of particular relevance to the current project is the department’s combination of expertise on governance issues with close knowledge of service delivery and welfare policy at the local level. The department’s excellent reputation in research is witnessed by its active participation in EU Framework Programmes, e.g. the Network of Excellence “Civil Society and New Forms of Governance” (CINEFOGO), the “Third Sector European Policy” (TSEP) project, the “Mainstreaming Gender Equality” (MAGEEQ) project and the “Quality in Gender + Equality Policies” (QUING) project. It is also connected to the interdisciplinary Institute for Gender Studies (IGS) of the Radboud University Nijmegen.
Taco Brandsen
Taco Brandsen is leader of the Dutch team and Coordinator of the overall WILCO project.
Joost Fledderus
Joost Fledderus studied Sociology in Nijmegen and obtained his master’s degree cum laude in 2009. In 2011, he finished a master in Public Adminstration at the Free University in Amsterdam. His interests cover broad themes such as social cohesion, social inequality, life course transitions, and risk perception in contemporary society, and he is especially acquainted with quantitative research methods. As a PhD candidate, he will use the outputs of WILCO for his own PhD project, which will focus on the concept of co-production.
Astrid Souren
Astrid Souren is contactperson for the EU on financial and legal issues from the Coordinating Institution (RU). Astrid acquired her PhD on science-policy interaction in 2006 from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands and has gained several years of research and education experience as Assistant Professor in Science Communication at Nijmegen University. She acted as research fellow and project coordinator at the Scientific Council for Government Policy in the Netherlands (www.wrr.nl). She developed knowledge and expertise on policy advice, science-policy interaction and coordination of international research and education programmes. Currently she works at Nijmegen School of Management, Dept. ICR (www.ru.nl/nsm/icr) on internationalization of education and research, including project management, and support on writing and acquiring international funds.
Francesca Broersma
Francesca Broersma obtained a Bachelor of Arts from University College Utrecht and a research master in Human Geography & Planning at the University of Utrecht. In 2009, she worked as a Junior Researcher at the department of migration studies of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens, Greece. Here, she participated in the FP6 research project IDEA [Mediterranean and Eastern European Countries as New Immigration Destinations in Europe], focusing in particular on the migration pathways of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Greece.
Her general fields of interest are migration and urban regeneration. For her PhD project at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen she will question the extent to which innovations in welfare can truly promote social cohesion among ethnic minorities in specific.
