Commissioned by Highlight Delft, I directed the symposium Robotic Relations, held on Thursday 12 February 2026 at Theater De Veste in Delft. The symposium took place during Highlight Festival and invited researchers, artists, designers, and makers to explore one central question: how will we live together with robots?

Rather than focusing on technology itself, the programme placed the spotlight on our relationship with machines: how we perceive them, how they affect our behaviour, and how they challenge our ideas about creativity, agency, and presence. The day was structured around three sessions: Robotic Otherness, Shared Spaces, and Creative Collaborations, combining talks, panels, and interactive installations.

Speakers: Amir Bastan, Ulrike Quade, Maaike Bleeker, David Abbink, Marco Rozendaal, Rocío Berenguer, Serdar Așut, Jorrit Paaijmans, Hrvoje Hiršl, Animaspace (Angelina Kozhevnikova)

Highlight Team Teun Verkerk, Anouk de Ruiter, Harm Jan Keizer, Eddie Kuijpers, Matthijs Koerts, Sem Wevers, Esmée de Ruiter, Jaimy van Berkel, Ailisha Shannon.

Picture: Highlight Festival 2026 - Symposium Robotic Relations. Pieter Kers.

Commissioned by Highlight Delft, I led the organisation of the official opening of the eighth edition of Highlight Festival, the Robotjaar, and the Innovation Gallery, a joint ceremony held on Wednesday 11 February 2026 in Delft.

The opening was officiated by Alexander Pechtold, Mayor of Delft and artist and researcher Noor Stenfert Kroese presented the work MycoGravity (made i.c.w. Amir Bastan & Johannes Braumann).

The evening brought together the launch of three interconnected initiatives. Highlight Festival opened its doors under the theme Robo-futures, a festival where humans and robots meet and makers explore how we might shape the future together. Alongside the festival, the Robotjaar kicked off a citywide programme in which Delft showcases its most innovative side through installations, demos, and public activities centred around robotics and its societal impact. The Innovation Gallery, a joint exhibition space of seven leading Delft knowledge institutions and companies, was also officially unveiled.

Highlight Team Teun Verkerk, Anouk de Ruiter, Harm Jan Keizer, Eddie Kuijpers, Matthijs Koerts, Sem Wevers, Esmée de Ruiter, Jaimy van Berkel, Ailisha Shannon

Picture: Highlight Festival 2026 Opening in Innovation Gallery Delft. Joris van den Einden.

Commissioned by Dutch Design Week, I led the organisation of Digital Futures, a group presentation hosted at Next Nature Museum during Dutch Design Week 2025. The exhibition explored how technology reshapes our world and experiences — from virtual reality to global platforms and personal narratives, bringing together designers who ask critical questions and discover new ways of living and creating.

Presented works & designersLeora — Sculpting Light Through Algorithm and Intention, Biteplanet, Imane Food & Design, MindLabs — This is (not) a person, IMPAKT CODE 2025: Technosferatu & VOLTA, Tamara Shogaolu — Oryza: Healing Ground, Erez Levanon & Yotam Sion — The Digital Decaying Text Machine, Elliot Han — (non) adversarial living companions, SENSOVERSE — PHYGITAL SEASONING, clockcloud-lab — Awakening Hammer-Ritual of Qi, Ziyan Wang, Zhiqing Wu, Junkun Long & Jiawei Li — Phanthera: The Dream Guardian, Yijia Li — Aftermath, Studio Ryan de Bruijn — Chronoglossa — No Time, No Detail, Studio Falkland — Apathos, Studio Massa — Maak je eigen internet, Digiegames — Digital Foosball Table, Studio Metaform — Singing Soil, Young Suk Lee & Daniel Saakes — Aesthetics of Bias, Xiaomin Fan & Zhen Wu — Let the Monster Speak, Slijpstof — Data als onbekende vervuiler, VOUW — Bloomlight S, Contour IDS — ACTIVISTIC DESIGN INTERVENTIONS, Sandhya Ravichandran — Trails Beyond Aisles: Curating Retail for The Many, Shenhuan Lu — Mycelinfo, Nina Kieviet — SCHR24.D7.W22.25.3, Thijs Biersteker x Natural History Museum London — Econario, Ayu Koene, Daniel Klein & Mehmet Berk Bostanci — STROLL (AUAS), Bishrant Tandukar, Fatemeh Azh & Surya Pillai — CRUX (AUAS), Diego Günther, Oana Diana, Madhis Vahabi & Alina Cliucinicov — Tutu (AUAS), Mihaela Chiselită, Daniel Klein & Amanda Wee — LINKZORG (AUAS), Elena Mihai, Geetanjali Khanna & Victor Sebastian Jaime Moncada — Echo (AUAS)

Picture: al michealf raay

I worked as a producer on the short film Bird Boy, by director Izak Berman.

Synopsis: Following the death of his father, Gabriël and his mother live a secluded life in the countryside. After Gabriël finds a dead dove in the garden, something strange and miraculous begins to occur, offering new perspectives to him and his mother.

Direction: Izak Berman, Script: Izak Berman, Cinematography: Sjors Mosman, Production: Daphne van Schaijk, Editor: Jacco Rienks, Composer: Rocco Hidma, Production Design: Klaudia Schenkels, Sound Design: Erhan Brinkman, Colorist: Matthias Stoopman, Sound Recordist: Andrés García Vidal, Gaffer: Otto Ligt, 1ST A.D. Iris de Git, A.D. Ali Tajari Mofrad, 1st A.C. Patrick Rietvelt & Nino Kennis, Best Boy: Leon de Haas, Hair & Make Up: Jasleen Kumar, Art Assistants Jurriaan Slob, Jeroen Bronwasser, Rosa van Dijk & Isa Menheere.

Cast: Teun Stokkel, Catalijn Willemsen, Claudio Magańa Torres.

For the Maritiem Museum in Rotterdam I worked as a programme/projectmanager on the new children’s exhibition Plons! De toekomst van de zee (the future of the sea). The new expo questions the opportunities that the sea offers to meet the challenges surrounding climate, pollution and the energy transition. By stepping into the wonderful (under)water world of ‘Plons!’, children playfully discover that they can have an influence on their world.

Art Direction: Siuli Ko
Spatial Design: Design Wolf
Graphic Design: Esmée Dros
Immersive installation: Design i/o
Creative spots: Kiss the Frog
Lightning: 50Lux
Building team: Indevormvan, Klief - aannemer in de kunsten, Francois Lombarts, Bas de Boer, Ritse Iede Reckmann (Maakhaven), Hans Jansen, Simon Fitskie, Bob van Lieshout,
Artists: Anna Boulogne, Laura Grimm, Maite Prince, Damian van Soest, Studio Maky, Tom Vincentie, Ming Sin Ho, Oceansole, Walvisnest.

Image by:

Water City Rotterdam. By Kunlé Adeyemi, a collaboration between the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and architect Kunlé Adeyemi's Amsterdam-based firm NLÉ, providing a platform for the diverse ways designers respond locally to the global climate problem. Adeyemi has been researching the effects of rapid urbanisation combined with rising water levels in African cities for more than a decade. Based on this, he developed MFS IIR - Water City Rotterdam, an installation of floating pavilions bringing his ideas to the ponds of the Nieuwe Instituut. The parallel exhibition with historical and current examples of possibilities for living and designing on – and with – water, includes work by Studio Makkink & Bey, Shertise Solano and pieces from the National Collection for Architecture and Urban Planning.

13 May 2023 - 22 October 2023

Spatial Design: Ben Shamier
Graphic Design: Rudy Guedj & Maud Vervenne
Production: Daphne van Schaijk

Image by Ruben Dario Kleinmeer

Cuisine for memorial service. To say goodbye in an appropriate way, the family wanted a vegetarian summer lunch. Beautiful table setting and flower installations by the DIRT. Food by Daphne.

Image by: Florine van Rees

The Workwear exhibition highlights how the simple design language, hardwearing materials and symbolic meaning of workwear all appeal to the imagination in their own way. Discover the history and global impact of the clothes that were originally designed as tools. Inspiring everyday fashion and haute couture, for decades they have been embraced by a wide range of freethinkers, artists and politicians as symbols of solidarity and equality. Could workwear help us to imagine the society of the future?

Curator: Eldina Begic
Spatial Design: Cookies in collaboration with Collin Keays & Edward Zammit
Graphic Design: Isabelle Vaverka
Production: Daphne van Schaijk (lead), Raven Kiss

Image by: Daphne van Schaijk

Itadakimasu means to 'humbly receive'. It's the word Japanese people say out loud or in their head before they start to eat. It shows the gratitude to nature and everyone that made this diner possible to us. I created this diner as an appreciation of my friends an inspirators, like Hiro from Choro Koji Fermentation and Alexander Gerhsberg who were both my internship supervisors during my education as a natural food chef.

Menu: sea weed chips made with Oosterschelde sea oak, goma dofu with dutch wasabi's wasabi, Chinese cabbage with mochi and silken sauce, lotus root soup, three types of daikon pickles (nuka sakura, red grape and kimchi), vegetable tempura, celery carrot kinpira, amasake, pear pie and korean yakgwa cookie.

Image: Yoko Negi

Internship with Choro Koji Fermentations. This Rotterdam-based company specializing in traditional koji-making techniques, utilizing wooden steamers and trays. Primarily producing koji, miso, koji seasoning, and amazake, but they also conduct workshops on koji-making, miso, soy sauce, and other related topics.

Image by Daphne van Schaijk

Work Conference – No More Building as Usual: Architecture Beyond Carbon and Greed

Exploring a way of working that goes beyond the competitive model of individual success and soloist genius, towards one of collaboration around socio-ecological ambitions. With: Maria Lisogorskaya (Assemble), Maarten Gielen (Rotor), Winne van Woerden (Commons Network).

Curator: Mark Minkjan
Community Manager: Lieke Maas
Production: Daphne van Schaijk (lead), Marije Woorts

Image by: Kees de Klein

Heritage innovates. It does this partly through technological progress, but mainly by questioning current practice. A collection is not a neutral representation of the past, but acquires meaning through interactions with, and interpretations of, new generations of users. This means that heritage must, by definition, be future-oriented. At the conference Disclosing Futures – Rethinking Heritage, on 2 and 3 November in Het Nieuwe Instituut, we will discuss the reorientation of the role of heritage, and innovation as a condition for sustainable collection management.

Head of Collection: Behrang Moussavi
Programma manager Disclosing Architecture: Gijs Broos
Project Assistant: Eva Harmsen, Christine Kappé
Project Management: Daphne van Schaijk

Image by: Florine van Rees

Lately, as makers and as human beings, we (red. the curators of the show - Sophie Krier and Erik Wong) have been feeling deep discomfort with the way we - as Western capitalist society - live with each other and with other-than-humans on this planet. Patriarchal thinking and doing, greed, waste, inequality. To secure a future for all living entities on this planet, we feel that a radical shift is needed. But how? We chose a book as our guide: Designs for the Pluriverse by Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar. His writing brings together many different ways of knowing. We set to work with some notions from the book: the realisation that we are all interdependent, the idea that autonomy and communality can go hand in hand and - if we want to "make a world in which many worlds can thrive" - the need for radical imaginations.

We decided to search at the fringes of Europe for manifestations of this more pluriversal way of looking at life and this planet. Why edges, why fringes? Because where one thing ends and another begins, change has room to grow. With makers and thinkers based in the Netherlands, we are connecting with local makers and thinkers in five locations: İstanbul, the Scottish Isle of Mull, Berlin, Casablanca and the Spanish region Asturias. At these locations we capture the encounters in radio talks that we publish as podcasts. We are still in the middle of this process of travelling, looking, listening and editing.

For this exhibition, we have reshuffled the narrative into a circular story of four chapters that you can look at as seasons or moments of the day. Time to Harvest. Letting Go. New Beginnings. Heat of the Action. There is a lot to see and to do in this digital version of our 'pluriversal yard' you are about to enter. Probably more than you can handle in one visit. There are 27 doors into the pluriverse: some small, some a little bigger. And if this digital tour stimulates your appetite: till August 7th 2022, you can visit the physical version of the exhibition in Rotterdam. We not only want to show a glimpse of the pluriverse, we are also trying to be pluriversal.

Come in, the door is open. Sophie Krier & Erik Wong @insearchofthepluriverse

Curators: Sophie Krier & Erik Wong
Spatial Design: Sean Leonard
Graphic Design: Miquel Hervás Gomez
Audioclips: Nina Hartskamp
Programme Manager: Joyce Hansen
Production: Daphne van Schaijk (lead), Floor Berkhout

Image by: Aad Hoogendoorn

MVRDVHNI: The Living Archive of a Studio

Image by: Johannes Schwartz

How do we present art? And how do we look at it, as museum visitors? Most of us immediately focus our attention on the artwork itself, unaware that how we encounter it has been carefully staged by a designer. In contrast, Art on Display 1949-69 focuses less on the artworks themselves, and more on the way they are presented.

The exhibition brings together some of the most progressive post-war exhibition designs by architects in the form of 1:1 reconstructions: a unique opportunity to experience and compare these radical architectural approaches in person. It features displays by Carlo Scarpa, Franco Albini and Franca Helg, Lina Bo Bardi, Aldo van Eyck, and Alison and Peter Smithson.

The 1949-1969 period was characterised by the search for a new relationship between art and the public, with fresh roles for art and cultural institutions. Enlightening people and democratising art were among the aims of this new ethos. The chosen case studies translated these ideas into the pursuit of a direct, personal relationship between the visitor and the artwork, simultaneously raising architectural, museological and social issues.

However, the exhibition designs do not provide a single solution. Sometimes, a solitary work is displayed alone in a quiet, focused environment. Other installations aim to achieve a sense of immersion, or confound conventions and expectations to provoke a spontaneous encounter – in a labyrinth, for example. Various displays create an intimate one-on-one encounter with the artwork, while others set the stage for a communal experience.

Gulbenkian partnership

Art on Display 1949-69 came about thanks to an invitation from the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon to develop the exhibition together.

The dozens of paintings and sculptures displayed in the reconstructions are from the collections of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. Pieces from these collections have never been shown in the Netherlands before. Exhibits include 18th- and 19th- century works from the private collection of the British-Armenian businessman and philanthropist Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, and works by modern Portuguese and British artists, including Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Terry Frost and John Hoyland, from the Modern Collection. 

Curators: Dirk van den Heuvel & Penelope Curtis
Spatial Design: jo taillieu
Graphic Design: Goda Budvytytė
Projectmanager & production: Daphne van Schaijk

Image by: Johannes Schwartz