The Randstad, Netherlands
I am an urban and housing sociologist with 25 years of international experience in research, teaching and consultancy across industry, policy, and academia. My current work focuses on social sustainability in living environments, and in particular, the study of collaborative living forms. I develop my academic work through Co-Lab Research, a research platform that I founded in 2018 and which brings together PhD researchers, postdocs, and Masters’ students who I coach to develop knowledge on contemporary collaborative living forms [www.co-lab-research.net] I strongly believe in the need for societal impact of academic research. To this end, in 2019 I initiated Project Together!, a cross-sector knowledge initiative focused on researching and fostering collaborative housing in the Netherlands and internationally. I'm also a member of the Advisory group of Cooplink, the Dutch network of housing cooperatives and I've been invited to contribute with my expert knowledge in this field to the roundtable on housing cooperatives organised at the Dutch Parliament's Tweede Kamer (second chamber) in October 2023. I recently published the book "Together: Towards Collaborative Living" (nai010), which brings together a collection of essays, data and case studies and aims to inspire the rethinking of the design, planning and management of housing and living environments from the perspective of collectivity and shared spaces and social practices. [https://www.nai010.com/en/publicaties/together-towards-collaborative-living/246100] Besides research and teaching, I'm passionate about shaping academic policy and collaboration, a field I'm active in my past and current roles as member of the TU Delft "Recognition and Rewards" committee (2019-2021) Co-chair of the Delft Young Academy (2022-2024) and as member of the Associate Professor's sounding board of the Dutch national network of female professors (LNVH). Are you interested to collaborate with me in #research #education or #societal-impact? Do not hesitate to get in touch! I'm available for media appearances and public speaking engagements.
This ENHR working group gathers researchers from Europe (and beyond) studying the (re)emergence of collaborative housing initiatives. These are ‘user-led’ forms of housing provision, such as Community Land Trusts (CLTs), co-housing, residents’ cooperatives, experimental work-life communities, ecological housing communities, new settlements based on (local) community asset ownership, self-building etc. Joint working group coordinators: Dr Claire Carriou, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, Paris (France) Dr Richard Lang, Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Linz (Austria)
My research and teaching focuses on the following fields: • Social housing / affordable housing in a comparative international perspective • Social innovation and co-production in housing • Collective self-organisation in housing and the built environment • Collaborative housing • Socio-spatial integration in cities • Sustainable urbanism I have applied organisational, sociological and political theory to understand the interphase between societal processes, institutions and the built environment. My recent research focuses on the potential for hybrid organisations to achieve multiple and (often) conflicting objectives in the built environment. I'm also interested in new practices and conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ and co-production in housing and urban regeneration processes. My academic work favours a pluralistic epistemological approach and mix-methods, with an emphasis on qualitative, longitudinal and ethnographic methodologies. In 2014 I was awarded the Delft Technology Fellowship [http://www.tudelft.nl/en/about-tu-delft/working-at-tu-delft/tu-delft-as-employer/delft-technology-fellowship/] to establish my own research programme in the field of contemporary collaborative housing approaches.
In this role I carried out research on different aspects of housing management and innovation, including the projects: • "Social Housing in England and The Netherlands: Between the State, Market and Community" (Doctoral dissertation). • "Social Innovation in Housing: Learning from practice across Europe". Study and discussion paper for the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), United Kingdom. • Social Services of General Interest (SSGI) in the European Union: The case of Social Housing (Webdocumentary produced by the Belgian Federal Service for Social Security; Book chapter in forthcoming book published by Wiley Blackwell, etc.).
Co-Lab Research is a research group working on the development, discussion and valorisation of knowledge on Collaborative Housing. Co-Lab Research understands Collaborative Housing as an umbrella term that encompasses the large (international) variation of collectively self-organised and self-managed housing forms. These include co-housing, residents’ housing co-operatives and community land trusts (CLTs), intentional communities, and many others. Co-Lab Research is located in the Department of Management in the Built Environment, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, at the Delft University of Technology. Co-Lab Research was founded in January 2018 by Dr Darinka Czischke.