“The only way to provide real evidence for the business case of workplace interventions is by getting involved in transdisciplinary research initiatives.”

Rianne Appel is an Associate Professor in corporate real estate (CRE) and workplaces at the Department of the Built Environment of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), in the Netherlands. In her research, she approaches CRE as an important strategic resource for (knowledge) organizations. She focuses on 2 lines of research: 1) how the different workplaces in the current hybrid workspace should be managed strategically (corporate offices, co-working offices, and home environments) and 2) how location, building and workspace design choices for these different hybrid work environment types add value to driving forces of their users (such as employee health and productivity, innovativeness of the organization, and flexibility). In order to carry out her scientific research, she relies on innovative methods of studying and measuring buildings and their usage. These include choice experiments, laddering interviews, experience sampling surveys, and sensor-based measurements.

As Rianne believes that the only way to provide real evidence for the business case of workplace interventions is by getting involved in transdisciplinary research initiatives, she initiated and chairs the Transdisciplinary Workplace Research (TWR) network since 5 years. She also started and co-edits the academic book series Transdisciplinary Workplace Research & Management, published by Routledge Taylor and Francis. Throughout the years, she has collaborated (and still is) in many interdisciplinary and international research projects between scientists and with the involvement of practitioners and users.

Rianne Appel belongs to the Management Team Research of her department and is research program leader of the design and decision support systems program. She is a board member of the Center for Humans & technology and sits on the advisory board of Smart Workplace. She used to be a board member of the European Real Estate Society (ERES) and the Dutch Society for RE researchers (VOGON). She is the editor of the Journal of CRE, a member of the editorial board of several other journals and acts as reviewer for many different journals and research proposals.

Rianne has presented her work at many different international scientific conferences and industry seminars and is published in leading scientific real estate and workplace journals. She also propagates her work to practitioners by publishing in national and international real estate business magazines and participating in communities such as Corenet (global association for corporate real estate professionals) and CREME (Dutch association for CRE directors). She has won several ‘best paper’ awards at various conferences and for different journals.

Rianne received her MSc in real estate management in 1999.  Before she moved to academia in 2004, she worked as a consultant for Buck Consultants International and for the international consultancy and engineering group DHV, advising small and large organizations on a wide variety of CRE issue.