**Dr. Ingmar van Meerkerk (1986) is associate professor at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. ** Van Meerkerk graduated his Master cum laude in 2009 on the basis of his thesis on the (financial-economic) steering relation between Ministries and quasi-autonomous executive bodies. In 2014 he defended his PhD thesis. His PhD thesis is about the role and effects of boundary spanners on democratic throughput legitimacy and performance in interactive forms of governance (government and citizen induces forms), mostly in the field of urban development and regeneration. After completion of his Ph.D. research, van Meerkerk continued working as a researcher at the Department of Public Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam, engaged in research projects (both commisioned as fundamental) on community-based initiatives, citizen participation and public-private partnerships. He focuses in particular on the role and challenges of boundary spanning agents in relation to collaboration, innovation, democratic legitimacy and performance of interactive governance. In his research, he uses quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods.