Kateryna (Katja) Novikova is a Leisure & Events Management student at Breda University of Applied Sciences, specialising in Urban Life & Placemaking. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she has been based in the Netherlands for the past four years, where she continues to develop her academic and professional path within an international environment. She also holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Psychology, which shaped her interest in human behaviour, communities, social dynamics and the ways people interact with their environments. Her professional journey has never belonged to just one field. She has moved between film sets and art exhibitions, hospitality and education, international events and public initiatives experiences that taught her to look at cities from different angles. From coordinating creative productions in Kyiv to working with exhibitions in Montenegro and socially driven projects in the Netherlands, she developed a particular interest in the moments where people, place and ideas come together. Today, she is particularly interested in the social and cultural life of cities and the changing role of public space within them. She sees cities as living environments shaped not only by design, but by everyday behaviour, collective experiences and the people who inhabit them.