Advisor social innovation
Fabienne van Rossenberg
fr@kl.nl LinkedIn profileFabienne is social innovation advisor at Kennisland. She wants to solve societal problems by showing sincere interest in others. This is, unfortunately, not as easy as it seems. Too often she has witnessed how well-meant policies fail because policymakers refrained from questioning and listening to the subjects of their policy. What do people who experience problems need? What kind of solutions do they envision? Fabienne is convinced solutions have the greatest potential when the people it is about are involved from the start.
Fabienne is fascinated by people’s behaviour. During her bachelor in Psychobiology++PsychobiologyPsychobiologists study the workings of the brain at all levels: from molecule to the human mind. It covers the nervous system, how neurons work and what the relationship is between the brain and human behaviour. and research master Brain and Cognitive Sciences++Brain and Cognitive SciencesAn interdisciplinary master program in which human behaviour is studied from multiple perspectives, including neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and computational sciences., she studied biological explanations for human behaviour and developed a special interest in the brain development of adolescents. However, throughout her studies she became increasingly frustrated by the large gap between science and society. Amazing studies with a lot of potential for societal impact are only accessible to researchers or are written in difficult language. This caused Fabienne to look for ways that bring science and society closer together.
Because of this, she became involved with the development of the course ‘A Broader Mind’++A Broader MindA course developed by bachelor and master students, teachers and scientists. It empowers students to become aware of their personal view and influence on societal challenges, such as sustainability, digitalisation, poverty, success and failure.
from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Together with a diverse group‘Participation is too often used as a false promise: obtaining feedback is not the same as participation.’ of students, teachers and scientists, she developed blended learning++Blended learningA combination of face-to-face and IT-based forms of education. Read more education that was based on the latest scientific insights. This experience was notably special because it was initiated from the bottom up, by students who wished for more personal and socially engaged education. The development of the course started without permission from higher up. Fabienne was amazed by the amount of positive energy and creativity released when people felt equipped to work on topics which actually excite them. This gave her an appetite for more.
Before starting at Kennisland, she worked as a researcher in the Society, Youth and Neuroscience Connected lab++LabIn this lab, scientists study the development of the adolescent brain in relation to multiple types of behaviour, such as prosocial and antisocial behaviour and mental health. at the Erasmus University. She studied whether the ability to make an impact on society increases mental wellbeing in adolescents. She gave workshops for adolescents in high school and coached them towards realising their ideas for impact. Additionally, she was part of the YoungXperts team. YoungXperts is a youth participation platform aiming to give young people a voice in research and policy. She organised youth participation initiatives regarding a variety of societal topics such as mental wellbeing and diversity. Through these activities, she met a diverse group of young people and learned that they often have good and refreshing ideas for solutions to societal challenges, although they regularly do not feel taken seriously by education and government agencies. In Fabienne’s opinion, participation is too often used as a false promise: obtaining feedback is not the same as participation.
In her spare time, Fabienne plays beach volleyball in summer and squash in winter. She loves eating, but dislikes cooking. She loses herself in other worlds through reading books, preferably with a cat in her lab, and she is at all times in for a board game. She enjoys travelling to far destinations full of nature, but will always return to Amsterdam where she can be found in a museum, theatre or bar.
