Oana Druta
Group
RESEARCH PROFILE
Oana Druta is Assistant Professor with the research group Urbanism and Urban Architecture at the TU/e Department of Built Environment. Oana is a social/cultural geographer and urban planner, researching housing and inclusive urban living. Her topics of interest include shared and flexible housing, urban commons and participation; housing pathways through the life course; homeownership, aging in place, and intergenerational relations. To date, she has researched and written about urban housing phenomena in Detroit, Tokyo, Birmingham (UK), Bucharest, Milan, and Amsterdam. Between 2020 and 2022, Oana was a board member of the Eindhoven Young Academy of Engineering and coordinated the activities of the Urban Innovation Think Tank at Built Environment. In 2021, with colleagues at the University of Milan Bicocca and KU Leuven, Oana initiated a new working group of the European Network for Housing Research named Housing and Young People. Between 2022 and 2025 Oana is coordinating the Dutch leg of the JPI Urban Europe Capacities for Urban Transformations project CoNECT (Collective Networks for Everyday Community Resilience and Ecological Transition). She is an associate editor of the International Journal of Housing Policy and is active on the advisory boards of Housing Studies and Housing and Society.
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND
Originally from Bucharest, Romania, Oana Druta received a BA degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Tsukuba (Japan) in 2009. During this time she received the Ministry of Education Scholarship awarded to elite international students in Japan. Later, Oana completed her Masters of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan (USA), graduating in 2011. During her Master's studies, Oana was awarded the Raoul Wallenberg scholarship for students advancing social justice, and the distinction for exceptional service to Taubman College and the Urban and Regional Planning program. Her master's capstone project was awarded the prize for Best Student Project by the American Institute of Certified Planners. In 2012, Oana started her PhD at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (University of Amsterdam) embedded in the ERC funded project HOUWEL. In 2014, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Birmingham (UK), Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) and Bucharest University where she conducted fieldwork into the housing careers of young adults. Oana obtained her PhD in 2017, with her thesis on 'Young adult homeownership pathways and intergenerational support'. After having been a postdoctoral researcher at UvA, she was appointed assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in May 2018
Recent Publications
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Shuangshuang Tang,Jing Zhou,Oana Druta,Xin Li
Settlement in Nanjing among Chinese rural migrant families
Urban Studies (2023) -
Oana Druta,Frans Schilder,Christian Lennartz
Home improvements in later life: competing policy goals and the practices of older Dutch homeowners
International Journal of Housing Policy (2023) -
Oana Druta
Family debts and intergenerational giving
(2022) -
Özlemnur Ataol,Sukanya Krishnamurthy,Oana Druta,Pieter van Wesemael
Towards inclusive urban environments for infants and toddlers
Children & Society (2022) -
Özlemnur Ataol,Sukanya Krishnamurthy,Oana Druta,Pieter J.V. van Wesemael
The inability of Turkey and Istanbul in institutionalisation of children's participation in urban planning
Children & Society (2022)
Current Educational Activities
- Urban case study
- Design for a Sustainable Future: specializing USER
- Design for a Sustainable Future: project
- Theory and practice of the public domain
- Research in urbanism and architecture II
- History of housing and cities
- Systems in the City
- Urbanism and architecture in context
- Project Urban restructuring
- Inter-university sustainability challenge
- Qualitative Research and Design-oriented Methods
- Inter-university sustainability challenge
Ancillary Activities
No ancillary activities