Joris Rijbroek is director of the Institute for Societal Resilience (ISR) at VU University Amsterdam. Within the research projects of the ISR, the central question is: are societies resilient enough to deal with the many complex social challenges of today and the future? He previously worked as a university lecturer at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and worked as a policy advisor and program manager at the municipality of Amsterdam (2002 – 2009) and the national government (2009 – 2015) with regard to the policy fields of integration, radicalization and polarization.
ISR
Within the Institute for Societal Resilience (ISR) we collectively ask what it is that makes citizens, institutions and governance systems resilient in dealing with complex social issues, such as increasing social inequality, tensions between ethnic and religious communities, new forms of (cyber) crime, doubts about the welfare and systems of care and welfare.
The ISR connects the expertise of its researchers to the expertise of professionals in so-called ‘expertise labs’. This collaboration creates on the one hand more scientific understanding of the complex dynamics of the social challenges we face today and offers on the other hand concrete insights on how to improve policies, methodologies and interventions for specific problems.
The term 'resilience' includes elements of flexibility and adaptability, but also strength, durability, and one’s ability to recover from setbacks. While the ISR has adopted the term resilience to describe this main conceptual focus, our research also includes all other elements of resilience that are not stressed here. We start off with the notion that a society is resilient when individuals (micro), groups and organizations (meso) and societies (macro) in times of adversity, threats, disasters and wars are able to survive and adapt, and make most of the opportunity to find a way (back) to being a good (or even better) functioning social system and a healthy society.
PhD Building Images
Joris Rijbroek works on the PhD project 'Building Images' focusing on the ‘Moroccan mosque’ in the Dutch urban context. Especially the form and function of these mosques play a dominant role. The main research question is to find out what conditions the form and function of purpose-built Moroccan mosques in Dutch cities. Do they differ from each other? What is the role of local authorities in the building process? What role do architects play?