Saskia Ruijsink

The Netherlands

Erasmus University, IHS

What do I do?

Saskia Ruijsink is working in the field of urban planning and urban development for more than 10 years. She is passionate about how cities develop and always curious to understand how people (professionals, non-professionals, from all kind of sectors) try to influence this process in formal and informal ways. She currently works at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, on training, advisory work and research in fields of participation, self-organisation and social innovation for urban planning and governance and sustainable urban development. She is a researcher in the EU funded TRANSIT project on Social Innovation (www.transitsocialinnovation.eu).

Other things about Saskia:

• She participated in international workshops and has research and working experience in The Netherlands, Albania, Kosovo, Turkey, Croatia, Belgium, UK, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Angola, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Bolivia, Brazil, the United States, Canada and China
• In 2009-2010 she was based for four months in the Global Land Tool Network secretariat at UN-HABITAT in Nairobi, Kenya for an assignment on gender responsive land management and participatory enumeration.
• She worked as a consultant in the Netherlands, she worked there in teams on development plans for urban areas, housing needs assessment, coaching of civil society organizations and organizing interactive workshops and conferences contracted by (local) governments and social housing agencies in a variety of cities and regions
• She  has a Masters degree (2005) in Urban Planning (magna cum laude), obtained at the Post Graduate Institute for Human Settlements (Leuven, Belgium)
• She finalized the MSc programme Technology and Society at the Technical University in Eindhoven (2004)