LECTORAAT CHANGE MANAGEMENT – De Haagse Hogeschool

What do you do at the HHS? 

I am senior lecturer at International Business (IB) teaching critical thinking and business communication to international students. With my great team we develop and teach skills from presenting, analytical report writing to debating and more. 

Next to that I am happy to be researcher for the research group Change Management (linked to Reshaping Business Education), weaving research into critical thinking education in the business context.

What is your background? 

Frisian with a Rotterdams-Groningse streak. I went to a college in the USA at the age of 17 where I discovered that my English was not that bad and that I could pursue a study in English Language and Literature. After two years I continued this at the VU resulting in a thesis about textuality. As a student I already started teaching college students Business English as a part-time job, which ended up in a full-time job and a teaching degree. I have been teaching at IB since 2007.  

What is your research about? 

I had thought about combining business and films for years but never got around doing it. Until a few years ago when the research group Change Management actually organized a film festival called Corporate Bodies: where film meets organization. I got the opportunity to take students and colleagues to the film Margin Call, introduce it and discuss some financial world issues with them. 

This entailed me looking into critical thinking education and film in the classroom but also outside going to the Filmhuis Den Haag and online. One part of it is critically reviewing the course I already taught and research how film/documentary enhances students’ critical thinking skills. And critically reflect what I do as a lecturer. Together with Jacco van Uden I have written a chapter about this in Reshaping International Teaching and Learning: Universities in the Information Age (Routledge). 

With my colleagues I have developed two Thinking in Action courses for IB, and the research and redevelopment never stops, as critical thinking never stops. 

The quest I am now is creating a E-learning for other lecturers on how to teach critical thinking skills linked to film (scenes). We need to have students improve their critical thinking skills over the course of the their study and I am working on a very interesting way of doing this – which I like to share. To be published at the end of September 2021! 

And of course on this site I write blogs regularly – Framing the Fragment with Others – where I go into dialogue with colleagues and students by reflecting on ‘business’ scenes.