transforming collaboration

My background is in cognitive neuroscience, combined with work in organisation development and training in communication and leadership.

Since 2025, I work as a postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University and the AMS Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, where I explore the personal challenges of professionals who seek to accelerate innovation in the construction sector.

Alongside this, I work as a freelance trainer, supporting scientists (via hfp-consulting) and other professionals in strengthening how they communicate, collaborate, and take action in complex work environments (see my portfolio – coming soon).

My work is grounded in a simple belief: well-designed structures can dramatically improve how people collaborate – and with that, the level of energy, purpose, and joy they experience at work.

I support teams and organisations in building a shared understanding of the challenges they face and the resources they can draw on. By bringing together different perspectives – on roles, relationships, and ways forward – we learn to navigate complexity together and unlock ideas and solutions they wouldn’t reach on their own.

My approach combines hands-on facilitation with ongoing research, allowing it to evolve continuously in real-world settings. I work directly with teams and organisations – as a visiting facilitator, through workshops, or in longer-term collaborations.

Along the way, I document real-life cases: the challenges people face and the strategies that help them reconnect with their own resourcefulness. This continuous exchange between practice and learning strengthens the work – for me, and for the teams I support.

My work and curiosity for social learning are nurtured and sustained by a wonderful web of people – among them is the enactive research group, with whom I meet regularly to reflect, exchange and learn together. I also take part in research-practice collaborations focused on collective creativity, embodied learning and the work of mediators of innovation.

I resonate with the meanings of my name in Sanskrit: both Anicca -constant change- and Anika -fearless force.

I move a lot – cycling, climbing, dancing, exploring. I’m drawn to the outdoors and to building things: from mornings by the water to weeks spent cycling across Europe with a hammock, to crafting the spaces I call home.

If all goes well, my next step is a small, beautiful house in south-west France.

I love lying on the floor, entering cold water, and getting in touch with people.

I am grateful for my current roles at ELS / WUR and the AMS Institute, and the networks around them – they continue to challenge and support me in growing as an independent, yet deeply situated, researcher and trainer.

This website is a window into that work: it provides recent ideas and activities, core principles, fragments from my notes, and glimpses of the projects and collaborations that shape it.

Take your time exploring.

As a PhD student of relational (participatory) and embodied approaches to social cognition, I used interactive games to investigate social behaviour at multiple levels: can we predict participants’ experience from their personality differences, performance levels and interpersonal movement coordination? During my PhD, I realised I care a lot about application: how can I use what I learn to curate spaces for meaningful social encounter? I thus embarked on several collaborative initiatives to bring relational and embodied cognition into our everyday life as researchers: the playful academic presents possibilities to bring embodied exploration and playfulness into academic collaboration, and the enactive research group offers a weekly online meeting space to people interested in a more generous and collaborative research culture. I was also centrally involved in organising 2022’s ESRI, a yearly conference hosted by Mind and Life Europe that brings together western science and buddhist practitioners.

Now in the Netherlands, I want to conduct research that strengthens relationships. Specifically, between the diverse professionals involved in making urban development more sustainable. How does a collaboration between diverse professionals look like that works ‘at eye level’? What do we need to express, listen to, and act on what matters? ..to all parties involved and affected by our work? My ambition is that this focus on interpersonal development not only empowers individuals but also helps us rethink organisations – towards working cultures and social structures that best support us in our work.

The TBL infra project is a wonderful opportunity to integrate my research and training backgrounds. I will use it to ask: how can a research attitude (the commitment to keep on relaxing / questioning the certainty of one’s assumptions) lead to better training outcomes? How can a training attitude (enhancing our ability to face challenges – introduce useful tools, create a learning environment, authentically share from our experience, facilitate practice, learn from and with each other) lead to more insightful research?