Quintijn de Leng

PhD Researcher

I am a PhD candidate with a background in geography and ethnography. Previously, I have conducted field work on the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain, in which I engaged with critical theory to look at how pilgrim identities were spatially articulated between conscious performances and routinized performativities.

In my current research, I focus on participatory planning and how situated performances of participation may stage and stabilize certain urban futures. Focusing on two distinct neighborhoods within Amsterdam, I seek to untangle how shifting configurations of power, agency, legitimacy, and knowledge among different stakeholders in the urban fabric may lead to certain planning outcomes and certain imaginaries becoming embedded and performative.

To do this, I take a dramaturgical view on participation, focusing on the micro-political and relational dynamics both between and within different stakeholder groups and how these are performed in situ. In the end, it is my goal to combine this dramaturgical perspective with creative and action-oriented methods to co-create reflections and interventions on the power dynamics embedded in the participation process.

Research question

How are configurations of agency, legitimacy, and knowledge in planning and participation distributed and reconfigured within and between stakeholders over time, across planning sites and phases, and both formal and informal arenas of participation?