Anique Hommels (A.M.) - Maastricht University

Dr Anique Hommels (A.M.)

Currently Hommels is Associate Professor and her activities focus on management, research and teaching. Between 2015 and 2018 she was the Programme Director of the BA Arts and Culture. She was responsible for the overall quality of the programme and initiated and guided a revision of the programme, in close collaboration with colleagues and students. Her current research focuses on urban sociotechnical change, obduracy and vulnerability of (critical) infrastructure. She studies urban resilience and vulnerability, and how cities try to innovate themselves in pre- and post-disaster situations. In her research, she tries to bring together insights from Science and Technology studies (history and sociology of technology) and urban studies. Hommels teaches in the BA Arts & Culture, BA European Studies, MA ESST, and the research Master CAST.

Expertise

Anique Hommels is associate professor at the Department of Technology & Society Studies, University of Maastricht. She was trained in the interdisciplinary Arts and Science programme of Maastricht University (1991-1995). In her PhD thesis she concentrated on the resistance to change (‘obduracy') in urban sociotechnical transformation processes. A book (Unbuilding Cities - Obduracy in Urban Sociotechnical Change (2005). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), based on her thesis, was published by MIT Press in 2005 (paperback edition Fall 2008). After her PhD, she worked as a researcher at MERIT/Infonomics (Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology) (2001-2004). At MERIT/Infonomics, her empirical focus shifted to the network society and the problem of vulnerability of sociotechnical systems. In 2003, she was awarded the Brooke Hindle Fellowship from the American Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). Together with Dr. T.M. Egyedi and Prof.dr.ir W.E. Bijker she received an NWO-grant for the project "Complex interactions between international standardization and national innovation projects" (2007-2010). Hommels was also one of the pricniple investigators in the ESF/Eurocores project "Europe goes Critical: The emergence and governance of critical transnational European infrastructures" (2007-2009). An edited book, based on this project was published in 2014 by Palgrave MacMillan. Her current research focuses on urban resilience after a disaster. How can disasters be turned into positive catalyzers for urban innovation?