Hannah's research focus is on 'Nudging social tenants: effects, ethics and evaluation of behavioural insights', and is a comparative study of social housing in both the UK and the Netherlands. As part of her visit Hannah developed her Dutch language skills and was able to appropriately modify her research design based on her abilities.

Hannah used the opportunity to network as extensively as possible with housing practitioners, academics and tertiary parties such as consultancies. As a result of this, the NSOB, the school who train Dutch civil servants, are interested in collaborating on papers with Hannah and she has been able to identify possible sites for her future fieldwork trips. It also enabled her to identify challenges that she can work on while in the UK to ensure that her fieldwork is more productive, as her topic seems to be developing differently in the Netherlands.

During her visit, Hannah attended a variety of seminars and other events, including a seminar on Researching Urban Cities and a tenant consultation event. This event was of great benefit to her research as she got to observe how the Dutch do such events completely differently to the English, which helped to develop her ideas around some aspects of her research. She also attended a Behavioural Change conference for practitioners, allowing her to network with key people, discuss her research, and get a sense of what was important to practitioners in the Netherlands.

Hannah also produced an article for 24 Housing on Undermining Crime and its relevance for Social Housing in England. The article has since been widely shared on Twitter and resulted in Hannah being invited to present at a sector network event and invited to the executive committee of a housing provider. This article has helped Hannah to raise her profile within the sector, resulting in greater access to events. The article is available on the 24 Housing website.

Hannah commented on the overall benefits of the overseas institutional visit: “Having the time to immerse myself in Dutch culture and meet a mix of Dutch people in both work time and social time has benefited the way I think about my research. I now feel better able to pick up on subtle cultural differences between England and the Netherlands and know what is important in my reading, which will help improve my literature review and analysis.

It has made me more interested in looking to either academic work in the Netherlands, or international consultancy work post-PhD, as I met an international consultant so that type of work feels more possible to me. Visiting universities and meeting academics gave me a sense of the ‘lay of the land’ of Dutch universities and a sense of whether I would like to work there.”