New colleague Annika Lübbert joined ELS per November 2024

I am employed on the TBL project - an interdisciplinary collaboration between the municipality and several research and industry partners, with the aim to find more sustainable solutions for urban development in Amsterdam. I am therefore also affiliated with the AMS institute in Amsterdam.

My ambition for this postdoc is to understand the (inter)personal challenges that come up during multi-stakeholder endeavours, and to provide training and interventions that foster the development of the respective (inter)personal skills. This means that I will integrate my background as a researcher and trainer into an applied approach: I want to conduct research that strengthens relationships and enables individuals, teams and organisations to access their potential for personal development as a powerful resource and tool to advance their work (and be more satisfied and meaningfully engaged at work). Core questions that motivate my work are: what do we need to trust our colleagues to express and listen to what matters? How does a collaboration between diverse professionals look like that works ‘at eye level’ and is of relevance to all parties involved? Can a research attitude (the commitment to keep on relaxing / questioning the certainty of one’s assumptions) lead to better training outcomes? Can a training attitude (enhancing our ability to face challenges - introduce useful tools, create a learning environment, authentically share from our experience, facilitate practice, learn from and with each other) lead to more insightful research?
My supervisor on this project is Pascal Frank - I am grateful that he got me on board and very much look forward to our collaboration!

Before I came here, I completed a PhD on the relationship between social engagement and interpersonal coordination at the institute of neurophysiology, UKE Hamburg (Lübbert et al, 2024). Over the course of my PhD, I looked for opportunities to apply my findings to my own work: how can I curate spaces for social engagement? I then organised interdisciplinary conferences (ESRI 2022), thought about how we collaborate as researchers (Lübbert et al, 2021; Lübbert, 2022; enactive research group) and ultimately entered a trainer role (with hfp-consulting, and in workshops that I co-facilitate with artists/movement/academic researchers on embodied cognition and transformational learning).

Besides work I love (need) to spend time outdoors, I play squash (anybody up for training?) and dance ci (is there a jam space here in Wageningen?). I am also a builder - in Hamburg I built my own gardenhouse, including furniture, compost toilet and solar/battery. Cycling to most places I go helps me relax, reset and get a view of the situation - so does cooking, and doodling colourful notes. I look forward to delving into this new phase of my life - and to meeting you!

Contact: annika.lubbert@wur.nl