Darren Sierhuis

PhD Researcher

I am a researcher and lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and an external PhD-candidate at the University of Amsterdam. I engage with a diversity of societal issues on theoretical and practical levels, through a multidisciplinary lens. I have developed particular interests in urban politics, urban experimentation and sustainability transformations. Currently, I combine these interests in my doctoral research, examining the socio-political dynamics driving urban experimentation in particular, and sustainability transformations in cities more generally.

Brief research statement

Achieving fundamental change toward sustainability in cities requires challenging the power relations that sustain currently unsustainable urban systems and practices. Urban experiments provide arenas where stakeholders can enact such challenges and explore what transformation could look like. Drawing on theories of the political, urban planning, and sustainability transformations and empirical research in Dutch urban contexts, I examine how within urban experiments conditions can be created that sustain political contestation of the status-quo alongside collective action, allowing stakeholders to contest dominant orders while working together toward change.

Publications

Sierhuis, D. (2026). Before implementation: (De)politicization in the proposal phase of EU-funded urban experiments. European Planning Studies, 1-21.

Sierhuis, D. (2025). Exploring (De)politicization in policy-driven urban sustainability experiments: Insights from a case study in Amsterdam. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 55, 100969.

Sierhuis, D., Bertolini, L., & Van Winden, W. (2024). “Recovering” the political: Unpacking the implications of (de)politicization for the transformative capacities of urban experiments. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 42(2), 303-321.