SPS welcomes Eva Purkarthofer who joined the section earlier this month. Eva has a 22-month position as a post-doctoral researcher financed by the LEaDing Fellows / Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND programme. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in spatial planning from Vienna University of Technology, and a PhD in spatial planning (‘Understanding Europeanisation from Within – The Interpretation, Implementation and Instrumentalisation of European Spatial Planning in Austria and Finland‘) from Aalto University in Finland. Mentored by Dominic Stead, Eva’s post-doctoral research project focuses on the dimension of agency in planning processes. She is specifically interested in the role collective and individual actors play in promoting sustainability and the different behaviours and strategies they employ to foster sustainable urban development. On the one hand, it is often individuals (such as planners or politicians) who take initiative, steer the public debate and guide urban transformations. On the other hand, collective actors (such as city planning departments) have established organizational cultures which affect their ways of working and shape their vision of a sustainable future. The project draws on empirical evidence from Finland and the Netherlands.
