Trained in both cultural anthropology and social history, she has conducted research on the relationship between lived inequalities and socio-political regimes in urban contexts in Egypt, Surinam and the Netherlands, and will be asking similar questions in my new ethnographic fieldwork in Marseille.
Anouk is currently leading two major research projects (2022-2027), Prototyping Welfare in Europe: Experiments in State and Society and Social Work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies, which explore what state-community relations are being crafted in experiments with social welfare and new collective arrangements in Europe, and what political horizons they prefigure.
Her doctoral research examined emerging forms of inequality and segregation in middle-class Cairo and among its young professionals. After a socio-historical study in Surinam, Anouk shifted her focus to Amsterdam, tracing how heated racialised debates about the nation and its migrant others have found their way into everyday urban life in the Netherlands.
Between 2015 and 2020, she led the 'Reproducing Europe' project, which explored the key role of welfare state institutions in redefining everyday citizenship in Europe at the intersection of new welfare models and anxieties about an increasingly diverse body politic in Amsterdam, Milan and Paris. This project inspired her current agenda on social welfare initiatives and the shaping of socio-political futures in Europe.
Tessa received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Toronto, in a Joint Educational Placement with l’Université Paris 8.
Tessa’s doctoral research explored the model of state-outsourced social work in France’s asylum system. Her thesis – Outsourcing Crisis: Resettling Refugees and Sheltering Asylum Seekers in France – examines how French not-for-profit organisations sheltering asylum seekers and resettling refugees on behalf of the French state emerged as essential players in minimising the crisis of the French republican state.
Before joining the Prototyping Welfare project, Tessa spent a year teaching sociology at l’Université Gustave Eiffel in France.
She is a trained anthropologist. After completing her BA in Toulouse (France), she obtained her Master’s degree at the University of Utrecht.
Vénicia's master's thesis explored how Dutch citizens experience the digitalisation of bureaucracy through DigiD and the inequalities this new form of bureaucracy generates. Before starting her PhD at Leiden University, she worked as a research assistant at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, mainly examining policing, security and violence.
After receiving her BA in political science at Davidson College, Martha completed her Research Master’s degree in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
Martha's dissertation, Uncharted Territory: The Greek Household and its Survival Strategies, centered around the daily experiences of Thessaloniki women during the austerity era and emerging household resilience strategies.
Martha is a reflective researcher, with a passion for storytelling. She regularly draws on family experiences for inspiration with the intention of bridging the personal and the academic. Outside academia, Martha has acquired significant experience as a knowledge management officer in the field of sustainable development.