Rianne Dekker (1986) studied sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam (BSc. 2009, cum laude) and specialized in Urban Studies (MSc. 2011, cum laude). Her master thesis focused on the potential of social media for creating an online public sphere. During her time as a student, Rianne worked at the department of sociology as a student assistant. After graduation she worked as a tutor in the sociology bachelor programme and as a junior researcher. She was a team member of the Norface-funded THEMIS project (2010-2012) which studied international migration processes. Her interests and publications focused on the role of social media in migrant networks.

In 2012, Rianne started her PhD research at the department of Public Administration of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She took part in the FP7 project ‘UniteEurope’ that dealt with researching and developing a social media analysis tool for local governments to monitor online discussion about ethnic minorities in their city. Additionally, she acquired funding and participated in two research projects for the Research and Documentation Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice (WODC) on (1) media-attention and framing of immigration policies (2015); and 2) social media use and migration decisions of Syrian refugees (2016). She successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled 'Policy in the Public Eye. Agenda-setting and Framing Dynamics of Traditional and Social Media in relation to Immigration and Integration Policies' in October 2016.

From June 2016 onward, Rianne has been working as an assistant professor at the Utrecht University School of Governance. She conducted postdoctoral research within the EU Horizon2020 project ‘Medi@4Sec’ (2016-2018) which explored the opportunities, challenges and ethical considerations of social media for public security. As a researcher within the EU Urban Innovative Action project ‘Utrecht Refugee Launch Pad’ (U-RLP)/ ‘Plan Einstein’ (2017-2019) she helped to design and evaluate a new form of asylum reception within an asylum seeker centre which functioned as a 'living lab'. In a study commissioned by the temporary parliamentary committee on digitalization (Tijdelijke commissie Digitale Toekomst, TCDT) (2020), Rianne and colleagues conducted case studies into parliamentary oversight on three recent cases of digitalization: 5G, the gig economy and automated number plate recognition (ANPR).

Rianne has attended and organized panels and seminars at various national and international academic conferences and she acted as a reviewer for various academic journals and served as a member of advisory boards of research projects. She is an editor of the Dutch journal 'Bestuurskunde'. Rianne has been invited as a speaker at academic and public events and her research appeared in several news media. As a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, she advocates for engaged research in collaboration with societal stakeholders which she considers to be a next step towards open science.