Eva De Smedt has joined the IDEA team since October 2023. With a background in academic and practice-based research and strategic foresight on topics such as urban leisure, culture, tourism and journalism, she brings with her extensive methodological expertise in discourse and conversation analysis and futures studies. After completing her PhD in Media & Communication Studies at VUB in 2015, she joined Tourism Flemish Brabant to help shape policy around Brussels and expats.

From 2016 to 2023, she was a researcher and lecturer at the Erasmushogeschool Brussel (EhB), where she was part of the research team Open Time – Applied Futures Research. There, she gained valuable experience within futures research and coordinated several case studies exploring preferable futures for the Brussels cultural sector, including for CIVA, KANAL-Centre Pompidou and Brussels2030. Eva still teaches some courses at EhB within the Tourism and Recreation Management and Journalism programmes.