Rate My Professor Jannes Willems

Dr. J.J. (Jannes) Willems is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning within the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental and Infrastructure Planning, a Research Master’s in Regional Studies (cum laude), and a PhD from the University of Groningen, defended in 2018 on institutional change in the Dutch waterway sector concerning the replacement of aging infrastructure. During his studies, he was a visiting student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Environmental Policymaking and Planning group in 2015 and conducted fieldwork in Brazil for the Federal University of Pará.

From 2018 to 2020, Willems served as a postdoctoral researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Department of Public Administration and Sociology, contributing to the European Interreg project BEGIN and the KIMA research programme on Marker Wadden. In 2019, he initiated an NWO SURF project with Jitske van Popering-Verkerk on the platforms Amsterdam Rainproof and Water Sensitive Rotterdam. At the University of Amsterdam since 2020, he leads initiatives such as GREEN-INC (2024-2027), Urban Blue Justice (2023-2028), and Ways of Water-Port of Amsterdam (2024-2026). His research focuses on how infrastructure planners and water managers implement blue-green infrastructures to foster climate adaptation, emphasizing techno-politics, policy integration, institutional analysis, and sustainability transitions through qualitative methods like interviews and participatory observation. Willems has authored numerous publications, including “Getting integrative urban regeneration strategies done: Insights from Antwerp and Gothenburg” (2023, International Review of Administrative Sciences), “The lifecycle of public value creation: eroding public values in the Dutch Marker Wadden project” (2023, Public Money & Management), “How boundary objects facilitate local climate adaptation networks” (2023, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management), and “Beyond maintenance: Emerging discourses on waterway renewal in the Netherlands” (2018, Transport Policy). With 398 citations on Google Scholar, he influences urban environmental governance. He edits Rooilijn and In Planning, co-hosts the podcast Onder Planologen, teaches courses on spatial planning and climate-proof development, and supervises PhD research on climate justice and infrastructure in the Amazon.