Mattijs van Maasakkers is an assistant professor in the City and Regional Planning Section at the Knowlton School. Before moving to Columbus, Van Maasakkers was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2013, he received his doctorate in Urban and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also received a Master in City Planning degree in 2009. Originally from the Netherlands, Van Maasakkers graduated with a master’s degree in political science from the University of Amsterdam in 2006.

Van Maasakkers’ research and teaching focus on the role of science in environmental decision-making, specifically in the context of complex public disputes. He has conducted research on environmental conflicts in the United States, the European Union and South Africa. He has worked with the United States Bureau of Reclamation, the United States Geological Survey, the National Audubon Society and the Consensus Building Institute on the assessment and intervention in environmental conflicts in the Columbia and Mississippi River basins in the US. His dissertation, titled Trading Places: The Development of Markets for Ecosystem Services in the United States, provides an in-depth analysis of the creation of these new institutions in the Pacific Northwest and the Chesapeake Bay watershed.