Jill Slinger appointed as full professor in Transdisciplinary Policy Development

With great pleasure we announce that dr. Jill Slinger has been appointed as full professor in ‘Transdisciplinary Policy Development’, by the Executive Board of TU Delft as of October 2024.

Dr. Slinger is an internationally recognized expert on integral policy design for water and coastal systems, using mathematical models combined with participatory methods. Policy analysis and policy design are, by definition, interdisciplinary fields where in-depth quantitative models, such as System Dynamics, are combined with ecosystems knowledge, economics, governance, communication science, implementation science, and social sciences. While many researchers focus on either the qualitative or the quantitative aspects of policy analysis, Dr. Slinger has always worked on combining and integrating these two aspects.

Transdisciplinary research

Lately, her research also includes the transdisciplinary aspects of policy design, where the emphasis is on integrating the knowledge of stakeholders in the field into the research and on making the research more relevant to the stakeholders. Given that water and coastal systems often contain cities, ports, and industry, these systems encompass a wide variety of stakeholders. Developing methods to effectively and efficiently involve these stakeholders in policy design and research projects is a highly relevant but difficult task. Few experts worldwide carry out transdisciplinary research for water and coastal systems, and Dr. Slinger has developed into a leader in this field. Given the effects of climate change and sea-level rise, rigorous and relevant research into adapting our water and coastal systems over the next decades is a tremendously important topic.

Jill Slinger: “It is a privilege to work at the interface between science and society in water and coastal systems.  With the concurrent challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change, it is increasingly necessary to engage meaningfully with people who live in the affected areas. By including their lived experience and local knowledge in decision making on their environments, new types of relevant, nature-friendly and practically applicable solutions can be designed and implemented. I look forward to expanding the methods for engaging at this interface, in collaboration with colleagues at TPM and the wider network of those interested in nature-positive engineering.”