June 2015 about education and research at Maastricht University
Pushing the
boundaries in Venlo
Louis Boon on the new University College Venlo ----p4 The art of collaboration MACCH, the new Maastricht Centre for Arts, Culture, Conservation and Heritage ----p7
‘Losing is not my thing’ Interview with Rob Reneman, founder of CARIM ----p12 1 June 2015 / UMagazine
30 Professor - Student Rob Ruiter and Henna Toppenberg: Learning about HIV-related stigma in virtual reality -----
/ Good education is essential / -----
p 16 When it comes to developing new techno logies, what needs are we creating? For Harro van Lente, UM professor of Science and Technology Studies, this is a question that needs asking more often. Social issues need to be the starting point for innovation. And for the valorisation of innovative research, a good education is essential. ----------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Magee, former IRA volunteer also known as the ‘Brighton Bomber’: “It was and is a real struggle. I stand by the course of action we took and the decision to take part in that struggle. But at the end of that, no matter how much I can justify that decision, you still carry this burden of people getting hurt or killed as a consequence.” ---------------------------------------------------------Born and raised in one of Limburg’s smallest villages, UM graduate Judith van Doorn has long been a woman of the world. As a micro credit specialist at the United Nations, she is abroad more often than not. Having lived in the Caribbean, Switzerland and Ethiopia, she is now on her fourth adventure abroad with her husband and children, in Pretoria in South Africa. 2 UMagazine / June 2015
38 Alumni
Wouter Stammeijer, Head of Investor Relations at KPN -----
News -----
Further
11, 27, 33 and 42 News
04 Leading in Learning
-----
Louis Boon on the new University College Venlo -----
07 Research and society
12 Portrait
The Ambassador Lectures: Patrick Magee
Wilfred van Dellen on his “annual postEurovision depression” -----
40 University Fund
Vivian van Saaze and Rachel Pownall: MACCH, or the art of collaboration -----
----p 28
34 Off the job
Rob Reneman: “Losing is not my thing” -----
19 E-Health
Marjolein Smidt and Trudy van der Weijden: Decision-making support for breast cancer patients and surgeons -----
22 Event
Summer Deejays in Maastricht -----
24 International
Dominique Waterval and Mohammed Meziani: First cohort of Maastricht-trained Saudi doctors ----------------------------------------------------------
Alum Judith van Doorn
----p 36
June 2015 about education and research at Maastricht University
Pushing the
boundaries in Venlo
Louis Boon on the new University College Venlo ----p4 The art of collaboration New Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage ----p7
‘Losing is not my thing’ Interview with Rob Reneman, founder of CARIM ----p12
Cover Rafaël Philippen Talented photographers were asked to come up with an - free interpretation image relating to one of our cover stories. The photographer Rafaël Philippen (Geleen, 1972) drew inspiration from University College Venlo. Philippen is a graduate of the St Joost Academy in Breda. “Photographer Rafaël Philippen is constantly amazed by the world. His is an innocent gaze, not unlike like that of the deer sun bathing in the grass in one of his photos. As though oblivious to evil. Perhaps a tad naive, and sometimes unabashedly romantic, but certainly open-minded.” Ruud Visschedijk, director of the Netherlands Photo Museum
/ Wake up call / Rector Magnificus Luc Soete
Early this year I delivered the annual Dies lecture at Maastricht University. This was several months before students, unhappy with the excessive focus on quantity as opposed to quality in higher education, started to occupy university buildings in Amsterdam. My lecture was called “Engaging talent to combat spiritual Alzheimer”. It was intended as a wake-up call … not in Amsterdam, but in Maastricht! As I argued – and if you allow me to quote my own words – “one may wonder whether universities too are not suffering from ‘spiritual Alzheimer’: forgetting what they are here first and foremost for: contributing to the academic education and formation of students”. The innovation of higher education, of course, has been a key aim of our university right from the outset. We’ve made a significant impact over the last 40 years or so with our student-centred approach, engaging students more actively through Problem-Based Lear ning (PBL). And we’ve reaped the rewards, obtaining higher graduation rates than most other universities. Not so much by setting targets, but rather as the natu ral outcome of a carefully designed, inspiring learning system.
Photo Sacha Ruland
But there is nothing worse, certainly in education, than complacency. In his Dies lecture three years ago, my colleague Wim Gijselaars questioned the balance between students’ internal access to knowledge in the classroom, and the external knowledge a mere digital click away. With the emergence of Massive Open On line Courses – where the word “massive” points in the exact opposite direction of our focus on small groups – this question has become even more pressing. How can we reform a closed, student-centred, locationbased education system in a world (to use the words of Jimmy Wales, our new honorary doctor) “in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”? Ultimately we can only address this through experi menting, as my predecessor Gerard Mols did through various ‘leading in learning’ micro-projects. The chal lenge now is to scale up these examples of best prac tice into the building blocks of PBL 2.0, and to roll them out across faculties. This is a complex process, but an essential one. To this end, we have created EdLab: a brand new, cross-faculty laboratory for educational innovation and excellence. Will this be enough to combat the spiritual Alzheimer suffered by universities today? Only time will tell. In the meantime, Amsterdam is learning from Maastricht with the help of Gerard Mols. As ScienceGuide put it, “Maastricht helps Amsterdam reform”. We wish him all the best! <<
3 June 2015 / UMagazine
Leading in Learning
Text Annelotte Huiskes Photography Sacha Ruland
The ‘father’ of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Maastricht, Louis Boon spearheaded the launch of University College Maastricht (UCM) and the Maastricht Science Programme (MSP). Now, as dean of Campus Venlo, he is gearing up to get University College Venlo (UCV) off the ground as of September. He is a keen proponent of the open curriculum model. “If it were up to me, this would be the model for the entire university.”
Cover image by Rafaël Philippen
4 UMagazine / June 2015
/ Pushing boundarie Venlo /
Given his career, you can see why Boon is such an avid supporter of the open curriculum. His CV fits right in with a Liberal Arts and Sciences programme. He studied sociology and philosophy, and began teaching mathematical logic at the economics faculty in Mann heim. Next he joined the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at VU University Amsterdam. After that came the Faculty of Psychology in Utrecht, followed by Health Sciences and then Psychology in Maastricht. Then there was UCM and the MSP and, last but not least, UCV. “I love do new things and I’ve always liked working on new subjects and in new faculties. Now for UCV I’m exploring the history of food; the different sorts of scientific research that has been done and how it has developed in different cultures. The only disadvantage is that it takes you away from doing your own research.”
Adventure Boon saw this same drive to do new things and the courage to take risks in the first cohorts of UCM and MSP students. He’s expecting the same type of students at UCV. “They’re not your typical students. I know from experience that students who follow a new programme always end up doing extremely well. Purely because of that I’d encourage everyone to come here. The reason is that these students are extremely motivated; they want to make their own choices. They have to be daring, because they can’t just resort to asking previous students on Facebook ‘Is this a good programme? Which course should I take?’ “ The adventurous nature of the programme is reflected in the slogan of the recruitment campaign: ‘Push the boundaries!’ This can be interpreted literally, given Venlo’s location on the border with Germany, but also metaphorically, as prospective students are encour aged to do something new and different. “We hope to kick off in September with 40 to 50 students. During that first year they’re your only children, so to speak; they get all the attention. So that’s a nice bonus for them.”
Footprint The idea behind UCV was first raised in UM’s Executive Board two years ago. The university has been running a pair of master’s programmes in Venlo for the last six years: the MSc Global Supply Chain Manage ment & Change and the MSc Health Food Innovation Management. But in the framework of the Kennis-As Limburg programme, UM is keen to do more in the areas of service provision, research and commercial activity in the region. “The master’s programmes are doing well, but with around 120 students they’re not large enough to make a meaningful contribution to the region. Our footprint in Venlo isn’t big enough yet to maintain our own staff here and develop a strong intellectual climate.” >>
the es in Dean of Campus Venlo Louis Boon
5 June 2015 / UMagazine
Applied
Many companies in this region are world leaders – they’re just not very visible.
In Boon’s view, the secret to the success of the Liberal Arts and Sciences programmes lies in their open curricula. They don’t focus on a single main subject, but instead encompass broad areas of interest. Stu dents create their own curriculum from a wide range of subjects to suit their talents and interests. The main difference between UCV and UM’s two existing Liberal Arts and Sciences variants, UCM and MSP, is that the Venlo curriculum is somewhat more applied. “UCV is a mixture of life sciences and social sciences that em phasises food and health on the one hand and logistics and business on the other, focusing on applications in practice. We want students to start conducting applied research in cooperation with companies in Limburg and beyond as soon as possible.” Another key difference is that UCV students will join forces with students from HAS and Fontys, institutes for higher vocational education (HBO) in Venlo. “Both students and teachers will get the chance to collabo rate on research projects and learn from one anoth er. For instance, UM is setting up a microbiological
Louis Boon (1948) studied sociology and philosophy in Amsterdam. In 1985 he relocated to Maastricht, where he was involved in developing several new programmes, including University College Maastricht and the Maastricht Science Programme. He served as the Founding Dean of the University College Maastricht from 2001 to 2008, and has been Dean of Campus Venlo since autumn 2012.
6 UMagazine / June 2015
research project on various gastrointestinal processes. This is fundamental research with direct links to pro biotics and the dairy industry, and HBO students will also be able to participate. So UM will be collaborating with both the business sector and HBO, which is a unique approach.”
Employability After the bachelor’s, some students are expected to stay on for a master’s programme in Venlo. Others will head to Maastricht or elsewhere. “By introducing them to research and business early on in the programme, we hope they’ll continue their studies and find work here too”, says Boon. “There are lots of opportunities. In terms of finances, the manufacturing industry here rivals the green and logistics sectors combined. And many companies in this region are world leaders in their sector – they’re just not very visible. When people think about Venlo, they tend to think of greenhouses and logistics. But there’s a lot of industry here as well. Slaughter lines, milking robots and all sorts of machines for food cultivation. Our task is to work together with industry and the government to develop a culture of innovation that attracts new businesses.” This is not something you can achieve in a couple of years, Boon emphasises. “The bachelor’s programme will open its doors in September. That means the first graduates will start working in four years at the ear liest. So you should commit for at least 10 to 15 years. That applies to both UM and the local and provincial governments. Only after that time will you start to see real effects.” <<
Text Jolien Linssen Photography Loraine Bodewes
Research and society
/ The art of collaboration / 7 June 2015 / UMagazine
8 UMagazine / June 2015
Each March, Maastricht turns into a magnet for arta lovers, collectors, curators and the rich and famous from all over the world. No fewer than 75,000 visitors descended on this year’s TEFAF, the world’s largest art and antiques fair. For ten days, the city becomes the centre of the cultural universe – a universe that is becoming increasingly complex. To tackle this complexity, academics and professionals from the field of arts and heritage have joined forces in a new and unprecedented collabo ration: the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage (MACCH).
Loraine Bodewes’ Zilveren Camera 2013 pricewinning image Art depot Bonnefanten Museum Maastricht
“It all started with the realisation that Maastricht University is home to a great deal of expertise in arts and heritage, but research and teaching are scattered across several faculties”, recalls Vivian van Saaze, assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS). “Since the challenges facing people in the arts, culture, conservation and heritage today are multi-layered and complex, they call for a multidisciplinary approach. Take the many industrial heritage buildings scattered around Limburg. Maintaining and repurposing these buildings requires expertise in architecture and art history, but also involves conservation, ethical, legal, planning, policy, business and financial issues.” The task for Van Saaze, the managing director-to-be, was clear: to create an infrastructure that would allow for collaboration both with colleagues from other faculties and with professionals in the arts and heritage sector. Only 18 months later, the interdisciplinary research platform MACCH was officially launched: a joint initiative between FASoS, the Faculty of Law, the School of Business and Economics, and the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences. Quite an impressive list, but not yet exhaustive. Key external partners include the Social Historical Centre Limburg and the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg, an institute specialised in the conserva tion and restoration of paintings, sculptures and interiors. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, Aristotle famously observed – and in the case of MACCH this was evident right from the outset. Specifically, from the conference marking the launch of the brand new centre, scheduled to coincide with this year’s TEFAF. “The theme of the conference was the changing role of experts and expertise in the arts and heritage worlds”, Van Saaze explains. “It’s a topic we all consider relevant for our own work as experts, but that also resonates with the professional world. Our legal panel, for example, discussed the issue of authenticity in the courtroom. To many people’s surprise, we learned that expert witnesses who are asked to give their opinion about the authenticity of an artwork can be held liable for this. One of the curators in attendance said he’d have to reconsider his role as an expert witness.”
Knowledge valorisation So MACCH builds bridges not only between four different faculties, but also between the academic and professional worlds. “There aren’t that many colla borations in the university where we actually work across faculties, let alone so successfully”, says Rachel Pownall, professor of Finance at the School of Business and Economics and a member of MACCH’s steering committee. “We’re all doing similar work in the area of arts and heritage, but from different perspectives. In the past there wasn’t much awareness of this. But since we started sharing our knowledge we’ve been able to make our research more thematic. We’re now able to jump on each other’s shoulders very quickly and help each other up – and actually give something back to society.” MACCH is far from your typical ivory tower, Van Saaze explains: “A lot of our re search is conceived in collaboration with the world ‘out there’, like our professional partners in museums and heritage organisations. Knowledge valorisation is often seen as a kind of afterthought, and even has somewhat of a negative connotation. But that’s not how we think about it.” A good example is the research project Hacking Heritage, led by the UM research ers Karin Wenz and Annika Richterich. This programme was singled out as one of MACCH’s flagship projects. Hacking, in this context, does not refer to an illegal practice. Instead it’s a creative process in which cultural assets, such as Limburg’s mining heritage, are combined and redesigned using digital technologies. “This is a hot topic at the moment”, says Pownall. >>
9 June 2015 / UMagazine
Teaching Back to the kick-off conference; or, more accurately, the day after. Van Saaze saw “her email inbox explode”, full of requests for collaboration and advice from companies, foundations and govern ment bodies. “That’s the kind of service we can offer, and partly what we’re there for”, Pownall says. “Institutions beyond the university are responsible for a great deal of art and culture, so it’s up to us to make our knowledge and expertise available.” UM students will also benefit from the existence of MACCH. But, as Van Saaze points out, when it comes to teaching there’s no need to re invent the wheel. “We already have the very popular joint minor Art, Law and Policymaking, as well as the Master in Arts and Heritage.” Further, in collaboration with Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg UM offers a course on the role of science in the conservation of visual art. “It’s such a great programme”, Van Saaze laughs. “I could have only dreamt of this when I was a student here myself, a long time ago.” <<
www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/macch
10 UMagazine / June 2015
Vivian van Saaze (1975) graduated from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) in 1998. She completed her PhD research in 2009, a joint project between UM and the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency on the conservation of contem porary art. She is now assistant professor at FASoS and managing director of MACCH.
Rachel Pownall (1973) studied Economics and Econometrics at the University of Kent. She obtained her PhD on risk management in interna tional financial markets at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2001. She is currently professor of finance at UM’s School of Business and Economics and at Tilburg University.
News
Sophie Vanhoonacker new FASoS dean The Executive Board appointed Professor Sophie Vanhoonacker as the new dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS). On 1 January 2016 she will succeed Rein de Wilde, who has been the acting dean since October 2005.
New study to help elderly people live at home longer The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has united top researchers from the universities of Maastricht, Antwerp and Leuven and Univer sity College Ghent in a new research group called D-SCOPE. They will develop a new vision of the future of aged care and seek ways of providing elderly people with the best possible care and services in their own homes. The goal is to increase their quality of life and decrease the costs to society. The Maastricht University professors Jos Schols (Geriatric Medicine), Ruud Kempen (Social Gerontology) and Rixt Zijlstra (Innovations in Elderly Care) are involved in the project. “Our role is to develop a new tool to identify vulnerable elderly people and offer them the right support”, Schols explains. “For this we need to come up with a method for measuring vulnerability that takes into account not only what they can’t do, but also what they can do.”
The selection committee considers Vanhoonacker the ideal person to lead FASoS through a challenging period and strengthen the faculty. She is well placed to bridge the gap between the different departments, faculties, and national and international partners. She knows the faculty and the university well, is commit ted to both education and research, and has extensive administrative experience.
Vanhoonacker studied in Leuven, Bruges and Brussels in her native Belgium and obtained her PhD from Leiden University in 1998. She started her career in Maastricht at the European Institute of Public Administration in 1987, and has been affiliated with FASoS since 2002. She is currently full professor of Administrative Governance, Jean Monnet Professor and head of the Politics Depart ment.
Maastricht University again ranked world’s sixth best young university Maastricht University (UM) has been named the sixth best young university in the world. This is the third year running that UM has ranked among the top 10 in the Times Higher Education (THE) 100 Under 50 ranking. The list was announced on 29 April at the Young Universities Summit in Dublin, where Rector Magnificus Professor Luc Soete gave the keynote lecture. Entitled ‘Development and growth: Tools for building a high-ranking, world-class university’, his talk focused on the indicators for UM’s success. UM scored particularly well on indicators of international orientation (e.g. the percentage of international staff and students), research and citations. UM’s total score also rose relative to last year, from 60.4 to 61.5. The top 5 was again dominated by Asian universities, with the exception of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). The EPFL came in first place, knocking South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology from the top spot. UM’s ranking among the global leaders was also borne out in the new list of ‘fastest rising young universities’ in the THE World University Ranking. UM took second place, having climbed 96 places since 2011. UM came in 101st place in the latest overall THE World University Ranking, and 17th place in the THE’s 100 most international universities. 11 June 2015 / UMagazine
Text Femke Kools Photography Philip Driessen
/ Losing is not my thing /
Founder of CARIM professor Rob Reneman 12 UMagazine / June 2015
You could be forgiven for thinking time has no impact on Professor Rob Reneman. In August, when the Amster dam native turns 80, he’ll probably still be working at Maastricht University three days a week. Founder of the cardiovascular research institute CARIM and for mer president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), he is busy working on his final publications. “But I’m going to call it a day once I’m done with these. Time is starting to catch up with me; physi cally, things are not what they once were. Getting up early is becoming harder and harder, and now that I’m less busy painful memories seem to surface more often. But every day my brain keeps working is a gift.”
Portrait
Reneman’s knowledge and character are widely re nowned, as is his remarkable ability to bring together different research disciplines. Despite having never written an application letter, his CV is impressive. On one occasion he was asked if he was interested in becoming Minister of Education and Science, “but it wouldn’t have suited me, because I always say what I think.” Another time he was offered the post of rector magnificus at UM, “but I didn’t have the time; I was busy running CARIM.” Over the years he has sat on all sorts of committees, from the Dutch Heart Foundation and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Re search to the general board of the KNAW and later the supervisory board of Leiden University. “I realised that for a young, small university, it was very important to have a good network. That’s one of the ways I was able to put CARIM on the map.”
Stopwatch Of course, CARIM also garnered international attention for its excellent research. That, in turn, was possible because in those days researchers still had the time for new scientific initiatives. “There was no one tapping their stopwatch, waiting for your next publication. We were given years to build up a decent infrastructure, and the funds to attract outstanding people who were keen to get involved with a collabo rative research programme.” Today universities are focused on getting returns, including from scientific research. In Reneman’s view, this is a symptom of a business model gone wild. “I don’t think universities lend themselves to an output model in terms of valorisation. How do you define the potential value of research? Look at the great scientific breakthroughs; typically, a lot of time passes between their discovery and their application in practice. The full value of Landsteiner’s discovery of blood groups in 1901 wasn’t realised until World War Two, when blood transfusions were needed. “Clearly, it’s impossible to measure the social relevance of research”. >> 13 June 2015 / UMagazine
Power struggles Reneman has witnessed many calls for greater democracy in universities over the years. “Together with other professors I sat on the faculty council in the 1970s. In hindsight, I wonder if we ever really had much say. The students and staff shirked their responsibilities, and there were all sorts of power struggles; it was more politics than logic. In the 1990s, when universities gained more power to make their own decisions, one actually opted for a business model with more professional directors, supervisory boards and management layers. This now leads to dissatisfac tion, because there’s very little contact between the management and the people on the work floor.” One reason for this dissatisfaction, he says, is the lack of information trickling down to the work floor. “The rationale behind decisions is rarely given. The budget for research and education is shrinking; meanwhile, there’s zero insight into the costs of management and real estate.” On stepping down as president of the KNAW, Reneman was praised for his ability to have open discussions about his plans – after which his own vision would inevitably be realised. “I lead people in a friendly way. You have to make decisions based on deliberation and conviction. And I was always happy to change my view if others raised valid points.”
Red ink When he became emeritus professor in 2000, his former PhD students gave him a book they made themselves. Many of them included a page from one of their own manuscripts, which they had received back from the professor covered in red ink. He would work late into the night to check their work me ticulously; nothing was left to chance. “That said, you should be open to the unexpected when doing research. Trust your intuition, and if you get an unex pected result, don’t think: ‘it doesn’t fit the concept’. Instead, try to figure out what caused it.” Asked about the research achievement he is most proud of, he lists the names of colleagues who have brought the projects he started in Maastricht to fruition. “They’re the reason we became a leading international institute in fatty acid metabolism of the heart, cardiac mechanics and the flow behaviour of blood cells in the microcirculation. At the risk of sound ing arrogant, I don’t mind saying it was me who got all this research going.” Personally, Reneman is proud of what he and Arnold Hoeks have achieved in the field of vascular ultrasound. They developed a non-invasive technique that made it possible to identify the properties of the artery wall in patients and volunteers for the first time. “That was pioneering work. In many studies in 14 UMagazine / June 2015
Maastricht and in collaboration with centres in the Netherlands and abroad, we were able to figure out the importance of artery wall stiffening in patients and what this means for the functioning of the heart. We were also able to clarify the role of blood flow behaviour in arteries in the development of athero sclerosis.” Reneman is also proud that researchers within CARIM were given the chance to excel in one particular area, such as atrial fibrillation or thrombin generation. He is an organiser and a team player – partly because he doesn’t have the patience to devote his entire life to a single topic. “I’d rather encourage others who are specialists in the field.”
Valhalla Working as a cardiovascular anaesthesiologist in Utrecht in the 1960s, he was sometimes bored when an operation by a surgeon in training would take hours. After doing a postdoc in 1970 in Seattle, then the Valhalla of ultrasound research, he realised he wasn’t keen to return to the clinic. “I worked hard in the US, but I had weekends off and during the week I was home for dinner. I wasn’t used to that at all! It was one of the best times of our family life.” Next he was asked to head the Life Sciences department of Janssen Pharmaceuticals in Belgium, running a group of about 60 collaborators. Once they
It never bothered me to just admit it if I didn’t know something.
had finished their tasks in product development, they had plenty of time left over for basic research. Reneman enjoyed his time there. But in 1974, he was invited for an interview at UM. “The challenge of es tablishing something completely new has always been a draw card for me. And at Janssen, I wasn’t able to further develop my fascination for vascular ultrasound. I’d been the first to kick this off in the Netherlands in the 1960s, and it’s not easy to just let that go.”
Honour He was appointed professor of Physiology in Maas tricht, where he was the founder of CARIM. In 1999, he was asked to become president of the KNAW. “It was a great honour.” During his tenure, the academy’s tasks were laid down in law and several international academic organisations were established in Amster dam. Reneman also initiated the Academy Professor programme. He finally returned to Maastricht in 2002 at the age of 67, taking up an emeritus post to contin ue with what he calls his hobby: scientific research. While his wife, Wijnanda, was largely responsible for raising the children, he has a great relationship with all of them. Those who know him well call him a ‘family man’; both on the home front and at work. ‘A Sunday child’, he calls himself, despite the fact that their first daughter died after only two days and their second son passed away at the age of 31. “Now I’m less busy, I lose more sleep over that. To me, this is one of the biggest drawbacks of getting older. But at the same time I think: if our first child had lived, we might never have known our two younger daughters. And I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.
“I turn losses into gains because I don’t want to lose. Say I’m having a conflict with a telephone provider; I get all riled up because I’m having to deal with people who won’t acknowledge their own incompetence. It never bothered me to just admit it if I didn’t know something.”
Basketball Losing at sports was never his thing either. He played basketball in the first division for over five years before he started his medical internships, and later played with a team in Maastricht until he was 50. “You play to win and try to learn from your mistakes. One mistake that sometimes haunts me now I’m older is a patient who died in intensive care when I was the responsible anaesthesiologist. I’d used a new procedure, one a renowned institute had published on. That experience taught me never to blindly trust the literature.” But in general, he looks back with satisfaction at his scientific findings, and enjoys the accompanying recognition. “When you get asked to sit on three foreign scientific academies, and the Academia Europaea even asked me a year before the Dutch one did, it occurs to you that people do actually notice your work.” <<
Rob Reneman (1935) is Professor Emeritus of Physiology and the founding father of CARIM. He has had an illustrious career in science and administration, and received many awards and distinctions. 15 June 2015 / UMagazine
Research
16 UMagazine / June 2015
/ The most important form of valorisation is to educate students well /
Successful new technologies create new needs. In the 1990s, the internet was little more than a strange novelty with only arguable promise. But in the space of 20 years it developed into an indispensable necessity, explains Van Lente. “Nowadays, if you want nothing to do with the internet you’re dismissed as a wacko. It’s become a human right, like water or elec tricity, that you shouldn’t be denied without reason.” Van Lente is active in a broad range of fields. One of the issues that preoccupies him is how emerging technologies create needs. Where is nanotechnology heading, for example? What significance does it have for key social issues, like sustainability? Often, he ex plains, no one knows how these new technologies will develop. A good example is NanonextNL, a research programme that is attracting major investment. “The idea in medical nanotechnology is that a drug is more effective if you transport it to the correct part of the body using a nanosystem. But we don’t know if this promise will hold true.”
Influence Needs are constantly being created, but rarely is it clear which will stick around. Innovative technologies work according to their own laws of dynamics, as Van Lente’s research has shown. Are we really in control? We never actually asked for the mobile phone; it came about by democratic deficit. What’s more, when it comes to identifying our needs we don’t operate as autonomous individuals, much as we’d like to think so. Needs are driven by desires, expectations and largescale delusion. “They don’t just bubble up from within us. They’re always embedded in what you see others do.”
When it comes to developing new technologies, what needs are we creating? According to Harro van Lente, UM professor of Science and Technology Studies, this is a ques tion that needs asking more often. Social issues should be the starting point for innovation. And for the valorisation of innovative research, a good education is essential. Text Hans van Vinkeveen Photography Arjen Schmitz
But however hard it may be, we can influence our needs, says Van Lente. Not at the individual level, but collectively. For example, a city might want to reduce the amount of traffic on its roads. Future needs provide more leeway here. “There are always decision points when you can stop and ask, what are the social consequences of this technology? Think of Nanon extNL’s lab-on-a-chip, which enables you to carry out many different tests on a single drop of blood. The developers had to weigh up whether the technology should be made available on the mass market or exclu sively to professionals. They chose the latter, for fear of ending up with lots of wrong results and placing a huge burden on the healthcare system.”
Responsible innovation So the basic premise underlying the development of a new technology should be a ‘makeable need’. But Van Lente would be happy even to hear the question being raised. What needs are we creating now? Are they desirable? Politicians, too, are urging scientists to think about this question, and ‘Europe’ is increasingly demanding ‘responsible innovation’. “We need to >> 17 June 2015 / UMagazine
think carefully about our objectives in developing science and technology, and whether or not they’re sound. The uncertainties make it difficult, but it’s also dangerous if we don’t.” Van Lente cautions against the unfettered valorisation of innovative research. “You start seeing that collabo ration with companies and start-ups in science parks are put up on a pedestal. As though research is only socially valid if the business world attaches value to it. But even Stanford, the beating heart of Silicon Valley, gets less than 5% of its research funding from the busi ness sector. The average in the Netherlands is 8%. It’s an odd fixation, this idea that innovation is driven by a direct link between universities and businesses.”
Knowledge society This is not to say there’s anything wrong with the Chemelot Campus or the Maastricht Health Campus, initiatives in which UM collaborates with industry and the provincial authorities. “But it strikes me that the university tends to shine a brighter spotlight on science parks than on education. This feeds into the false suggestion that a university which works closely with companies has more value for society.”
to think critically about what technology involves and what opportunities and consequences it has for society. The education on offer today doesn’t come close to meeting this demand.”
Social innovation So we should be training more technologists, then? On the contrary: “Innovation is about much more than just technology. It’s about asking ques tions, for example about how to organise society so that everyone can make a valuable contribution.” In so far that this happens today, it’s pure coincidence, says Van Lente. Palaeoecology, for instance, has sud denly become a hot topic thanks to climate change. Yet experts in this field were studying how global warming changes ecosystems long before it was ‘in’. “That’s falls under social innovation,” explains Van Lente, “which is something that’s addressed in pro grammes like Arts & Culture and European Studies. Though in turn, they could perhaps benefit from a little more technology.” <<
As Van Lente sees it, the most important form of valorisation by far is giving students a good education. “The spin-off of twelve businesses is peanuts com pared to the training of tens of thousands of students to function in the knowledge-based society of tomor row. If you want innovation, you need to teach people
Innovation is about much more than just technology.
Harro van Lente (1962) is full professor of Science and Technology Studies at UM’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He will also soon become head of the Department of Technology and Society. Van Lente’s research focuses on how emerging technologies (e.g. nanotechnology, hydrogen and medical techno logies) give rise to novelty and needs. His work spans the areas of technology assessment, foresight, in termediary organisations, the politics of knowledge production and the philosophy of technology.
18 UMagazine / June 2015
CAPHRI research leader professor Trudy van der Weijden / MUMC+ oncology surgeon Marjolein Smidt Boon
Discussion
/ Decision-making support for breast cancer patients and surgeons / Text Graziella Runchina Photography Paul van der Veer 19 June 2015 / UMagazine
Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have to make some tough decisions. In April, the Maastricht Univer sity Medical Centre+ (MUMC+) launched the Breast Cancer Decision Aid for patients with early stage breast cancer. The aim of this digital tool is to help women make an infor med choice between breastconserving therapy and a mastectomy with or without breast reconstruction. “Interna tional studies show that pa tients are less likely to regret their decision and more likely to be satisfied with their treat ment when they get the chance to make choices together with the doctor and the treatment team”, says the project leader Trudy van der Weijden. “We’re convinced that using the Breast Cancer Decision Aid improves the dialogue between doctor and patient.”
“Women with early stage breast cancer have a tumour in their breast, possibly with limited metasta sis to the lymph nodes in the armpit”, says Marjolein Smidt, an oncology surgeon at the MUMC+. She played a key role in initiating this pilot project, which came about thanks to funding from the international breast cancer charity Pink Ribbon. These patients, Smidt explains, are typically given the choice between a mastectomy with possible reconstruction on the one hand, and breast-conserving surgery followed by radiotherapy on the other. “The chance of survival is the same, so there’s no one best solution.”
The dilemma “We developed the tool to simplify the decisions that patients have to make before starting treat ment”, explains Van der Weijden. “Many women are faced with a huge dilemma: given the same chance of survival, do I prefer breast-conserving therapy or a mastectomy? If I choose the mastectomy, do I want a breast reconstruction? And if so, do I want it done now or later? Of course, you only start thinking about these questions after you’ve been diagnosed and heard the bad news from your doctor.”
Information overload Smidt continues: “Patients receive a lot of infor mation during that conversation, and it’s unclear how much of it they actually remember. In addition, this information is subjective: every doctor has their own way of communicating with their patients. E-health 20 UMagazine / June 2015
Trudy van der Weijden (1962) has been professor of Implementation of Clinical Practice Guidelines at UM’s Department of General Practice since 2010. She leads the CAPHRI research pro gramme Implementation of Evidence and the Pink Ribbon project Decide Together (Samen Beslissen). Wilma Savelberg is working on her PhD research and conducting follow-up research in the Pink Ribbon project.
can help doctors and patients arrive at informed decisions together. It’s all about using new informa tion and communication technologies to support or improve health and healthcare, and it has a number of advantages. The language used to present the information is clear, understandable and neutral, so everyone interprets it the same way. And patients can consult it from the comfort of their own home.”
Joint decision making “There’s more and more evidence that patients want to be involved in the treatment choices they can or have to make with their doctors, especially once they’ve been fully informed about the dilemmas”, says Van der Weijden. “These days patients have more knowledge and are often more articulate than they used to be. You can also see this in the consultation room.” In the pilot study, women can log in to the Breast Cancer Decision Aid at home and go through the infor mation either on their own or with family members. Smidt: “This allows them to weigh up the various con siderations one step at a time. For example, there are different options for reconstruction. The tool explicitly describes these different options, giving users the chance to think about these at their own pace. “By going through the entire decision tree, the pa tient gains insight into all the options as well as her own considerations and needs. She can type in her questions, concerns and wishes. And at the end she can make a printout summarising her considerations. She can then take this with her to her next appoint ment at the hospital, which provides a useful point of departure for talking with the doctor. But it also helps us to gain insight into the things that are important to patients. The art, ultimately, is to coach the patient through the decision-making process. It’s about not panicking, but making an informed decision.”
Subjective “Doctors tend to think they do a good job at in volving their patients in the decision-making process”, says Van der Weijden. “But it turns out that women with breast cancer often receive subjective informa tion, and aren’t always encouraged to speak their minds about their preferences. Shared decisionmaking approaches and tools can help patients figure
out what their preferences are. Because at the end of the day, we want patients to be as satisfied as possible about their final decision.” So do e-health in general, and the Breast Cancer Deci sion Aid in particular, diminish the role of the doctor? “On the contrary”, says Van der Weijden. “When e-health is used correctly you see that the questions asked are the same as those that arise in the consultation room. But it helps to bring the communi cation between doctor and patient to a higher level. The patient has done some ‘homework’ and has a certain amount of background information about the treatment options already. This helps you to zoom in on the key issues faster.” Collaborating with the MUMC+ on this project are the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Amsterdam’s Academic Medical Center (AMC) and the Alexander Monro breast cancer hospital. After four months, the pilot will be thoroughly evaluated, including faceto-face interviews with women who have used the decision aid as well as their healthcare providers. According to Van der Weijden and Smidt, e-health could really take off in the Netherlands if ways can be found to implement it in daily clinical practice. To this end, the help of professional designers is needed; they collaborated with the company ZorgKeuzeLab to come up with the Breast Cancer Decision Aid. “In the US and England, decision aids are a standard part of the treat ment programme in breast cancer centres. We hope to see them being taken up here too.” <<
We developed the tool to simplify the decisions that patients have to make.
Marjolein Smidt (1972) is an oncology surgeon at the MUMC+ and affiliated with the GROW School for Oncology and Developmen tal Biology. She is the Prin cipal Investigator on several projects seeking to develop customised treatment plans for breast cancer patients. 21 June 2015 / UMagazine
22 UMagazine / June 2015
Event
The seventh Summer Deejays was held at De Griend in Maastricht on 8 May. Summer Deejays is a large dance event organised by and for students with artists from the Netherlands and abroad. This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DJs included De Dikke en de Dunne and Kapibara. The first event took place in 2009, with the aim of bringing people of all different nationalities together in Maastricht. Photography Paul van der Veer
08.05.15 Summer Deejays
23 June 2015 / UMagazine
Text Jos Cortenraad Photography Dominique Waterval
International
/ First cohort of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Maastrichtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;trained Saudi doctors / In 2009 Sulaiman Al Rajhi called in the help of Maastricht University (UM). The billionaire Saudi businessman dreamed of establishing a private university of medicine in his homeland. Now, his dream has become reality: the first doctors will graduate from the Sulaiman Al Rajhi Medical College this spring. 24 UMagazine / June 2015
Al Rajhi building
Oil revenue may have made Saudi Arabia extraordinarily rich, but the country is still thirsty for knowledge. With huge investments in schools and universities, it is making rapid progress. And eager businesspeople and sheiks are starting up their own initiatives. Among them is Sulaiman Al Rajhi. Thanks to banking and a vast chicken-farming empire, his personal fortune is estimated at a cool seven billion dollars. Ten years ago he presented his plans for a private university and medical faculty in the Al-Qassim region; a ‘health city’ in the middle of the desert.
Recognition Building the university was no problem. The key was to come up with a curriculum and overarching education system – and Al Rajhi had his eye on Maas tricht. For UM, this was a great opportunity: it meant recognition for UM’s education system and fit well with the university’s international ambitions. Not to mention the lure of additional revenue; the business man was willing to pay well for Maastricht skills and expertise. But the then UM president Jo Ritzen, director Nick Bos and dean Harry Hillen of the Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) took their time to sign the lucrative ten-year contract. “We’re very careful when it comes to choosing partners”, says Dominique Waterval, who would become the project’s organiser. “Maastricht has a fantastic global reputation. Not only thanks to Problem-Based Learning, but also because the FHML’s educational publications are among the most highly cited in their field. UM is keen to share knowledge and export its education system. The fact that this was a non-profit, private project with guaran teed investments in quality made the decision easier.”
Challenge The Saudis celebrated the signing of the contract in exuberant fashion. “‘We cracked the doors from Maastricht’, the dean shouted. That says it all”, Wa terval laughs. He wasn’t new to the ways of Saudis. “I spent a year working for a consultancy in Saudi Arabia. So I already knew the country a bit, and I knew how education is organised there. As an educationalist, translating our model to the Arab world is a great challenge.” He also had personal motives to take on this task. “Theo van Gogh had just been murdered and the discussion on Islam was at its peak. Saudi Arabia is a melting pot of cultures. Especially in the education sector, Pakistanis, Syrians, Palestinians, Americans and Sudanese work together. I was curious as to how the non-Islamic, European culture would fit in. I figured it was the perfect opportunity to gain a deeper under standing of one another, to bridge the gap between two worlds. “Six years later, I’d venture to say the differences aren’t all that enormous. The students here are working towards their future, just like in every university. They want to become doctors, specialists. Education and knowledge exchange brings people together and helps to resolve conflicts.” >>
Skills training at the Medical College
25 June 2015 / UMagazine
Blueprint The assignment: to produce the first cohort of medical doctors within six years. But how do you transplant an entire educational concept on the other side of the world? There are no ready-made blueprints for this situation. “True”, says Mohammed Meziani, an educationalist who has been involved with the project since 2011. “This isn’t a satellite faculty like those of other large universities, staffed by UM teachers. In stead Maastricht shares its system with the local staff, providing them with teaching materials, readers and lectures. And UM professors support the Saudi teach ers in terms of both subject matter and didactics.” The information flow is controlled by the project team, consisting of Dominique Waterval, Marjolijn Tinne mans and Mohammed Meziani. “Implementing PBL is complicated, because almost no one in the Middle East has experience with it”, says Meziani. “And tradition al Saudi medical programmes don’t involve a lot of practical clinical training. In the Netherlands it forms a much larger part of the curriculum. So UM conducts an annual evaluation of the quality of the education students receive at the new college.”
Brokers The language barrier posed few problems, adds Waterval. “The level of English is usually good, especially because we’ve scheduled a year of general classes before the programme starts to fill any gaps. Our role is primarily that of a broker. We take care of the logistics, equipment for the practicals, coordina tion between the two faculties, and regular exchanges and visits. We’ve invested a lot of time and energy in building up relationships. The people in Maastricht are usually very motivated to help their Saudi colleagues. To be honest, we’re surprised at what we’ve been able to achieve in just five years. The PBL system is in full swing with a local flavour, and even the practical com ponents are integrated well in the new programme.” This spring the first graduates will receive their medi cal degrees. According to initial benchmark tests, their final attainment level matches that of graduates of public Saudi universities. Al Rajhi has intimated that he is satisfied with Maastricht’s contribution. “We’re already talking tentatively about the next batch of students”, says Meziani. “And there’s talk of starting the same programme for women, a possibility we took into account when designing the faculty. In Saudi Arabia, men and women are separated very strictly. A medical faculty for women would complete the project.” <<
Mohammed Meziani (1983) studied Physiotherapy and Education Sciences in Utrecht, followed by a master’s degree in Organisational Sciences. After working for several con sulting firms, he joined the UM School of Health Professions Education as a project manager in 2012.
Dominique Waterval (1978) has a bachelor’s degree in International Economics and a master’s degree in Edu cation Sciences from UM. Before joining the UM School of Health Professions Ed ucation in 2009 he worked for a consult ing firm in various countries, including Mozambique and Saudi Arabia.
26 UMagazine / June 2015
King visits UM institute MERLN In April His Majesty King Willem-Alexander paid a working visit to the UM Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine (MERLN). His host, Professor Clemens van Blitterswijk, explained the latest develop ments in regenerative medicine. Also present were UM president Professor Martin Paul, Governor Theo Bovens and Mayor Onno Hoes.
Photos Harry Heuts
Van Blitterswijk’s research group specialises in developing new technologies that can be applied in regenerative medicine. A par ticular area of interest is the development of ‘smart’ biomaterials to repair damaged tissue using the patient’s own stem cells. The working visit focused on three clinically relevant themes: the regeneration of the locomotor apparatus, the cardiovascular system and the organs. The king discussed these themes with scientists and business
Frans van Leijden quartermaster of Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo Frans van Leijden (52) has been appointed quartermaster of the Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo. Van Leijden will retain his position as director of the HAS University of Applied Sciences in Venlo. In his capacity at the HAS, Van Leijden has been closely involved in the development of the Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo. The campus was officially opened on 1 January 2015, with offices in the Innova Tower on the former Floriade grounds in Venlo. The HAS was previously involved in BrightBox in the Innova Tower, a joint project with Philips, the Meterik-based company Botany and the Province of Limburg focused on cultivating crops without daylight. In his new position as quartermaster, Van Leijden will be second ed to UM, one of the founders of the new campus along with the Province of Limburg. A ‘networking’ campus, it will cluster research and education from UM, HAS and Fontys and develop innovations for commercial products and services. Van Leijden will work closely with the campus dean, UM professor Louis Boon, to shape the new campus and its primary themes: nutrition, health, logistics and crossovers with the manufacturing industry.
News people who are involved in various stages of the process: from incubating ideas, transforming them into spin-off companies (such as Materiomics), transitioning from spin-offs to SMEs that actually sell products (such as Xeltis), and finally developing into high-turnover, international companies (such as Medtronic). Later the king visited the MERLN laboratory, where researchers briefly explained the different technologies they were working on.
Sparing older employees doesn’t work. Training does Older workers are more willing and motivated to work longer if their employers give them good training opportunities rather than additional leave or a lighter workload. This is the conclusion of recent research conducted at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) at Maastricht University (UM). This finding runs contrary to popular belief. In negotiations on collective labour agreements, seniors’ days and other measures to lighten the workload are traditionally regarded as rights acquired by older employees. And employers typically assume that investing in training for older employees no longer pays off. The data were drawn from an annual internet survey among 57,000 employees and 2,500 employers affiliated with the pension provider APG. The participants worked in education, government, and the housing and construction sectors. Unique to this research project was that the employees and employers could be linked, revealing the effects of employers’ policies on both parties. The research was partly funded by the Gak Institute and Netspar.
(Read the interview with Louis Boon on page 4.) 27 June 2015 / UMagazine
Text Femke Kools Photography Sacha Ruland
Lectures
/ A circle that can’t be squared / Patrick Magee, a former IRA volunteer also known as the ‘Brighton Bomber’, is never caught smiling in a picture. This is a conscious decision: “These are serious matters. When I let my guard down, some cameraman will catch me in a moment of hysteria and that’s what appears: me with a silly grin. The message I’m trying to send can be easily undermined by tendentious reporting. And there are the people who were hurt by the actions of the IRA; you have to be conscious of them too. What I do is challenging to people.”
28 UMagazine / June 2015
It’s Thursday evening, 5 March, a few hours before Patrick Magee (Belfast, 1951) will meet an audience of about 500 students as part of Maastricht Univer sity’s series The Ambassador Lectures. He is the man who planted a bomb in the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984, where Margaret Thatcher and her fellow Conservative Party members were staying. Five people were killed and 31 wounded. During his time behind bars, Magee wrote his PhD thesis, ‘Gangsters or Guerrillas? Representations of Irish Republicans in “Troubles Fiction” ’. “I felt that the novels coming out in that period misrepresented things. The message throughout was very antagonistic towards the republicans. They were depicted as throwbacks, using violence for violence’s sake, involved in criminality and drugs, and driven by bloodlust, rather than there being an actual context of discrimination and denial of rights and oppres sion that we felt had to be resisted through armed struggle. I got my PhD from the University of Ulster in October 1999.” What were your personal reasons for joining the IRA? After all, others felt the same way but didn’t participate in armed struggle. “We’re all situated differently. I was living in a small Catholic nationalist ghetto, surrounded by loyalist Protestants. There was a lot of violence, a lot of attacks on the streets. I was greatly inspired and moved by the way a small, working-class, very poor community responded, drawing on their very limited resources to defend themselves. There was a struggle going on and we had to do it by the gun at that stage. I think that arises from the fact that we didn’t have the strength to do it any other way.”
The Ambassador Lectures is a lecture series giving UM students and staff the opportunity to meet experts from different fields, engage in academic debate and discuss current issues. It embraces a wide range of topics and speakers from all over the world, reflecting UM’s concern for global as well as social issues. Events in this series are often initiated by UM students who express interest in a particular topic or speaker and help to organise the event. More information on past and upcoming events can be found on the Facebook page: facebook.com/AmbassadorLectureSeries?ref=bookmarks
Photo Istock
Terrorism
You said in an earlier interview that you were in a war, and you wouldn’t call that terrorism. “We’ve always been labelled ‘terrorists’ by the British state and our enemies. That label has had a particular application since 9/11, to the extent that I think it’s gotten in the way; it was designed to impede a proper analysis of the facts and the contexts of the situations where this violence occurs. How can you deal with any situation as complex as what’s happening in this world unless you define it properly?” So when you look at ISIS now, can you compare the IRA to that? “There’s violence; that’s what we have in common. But the context and the shape of the violence is different. At a very basic level, there’s a major difference in moti vation, outlook and methods between a group like the IRA and groups like ISIS. To understand why young men and women want to be part of that, you have to go beyond the labels ‘terrorists’ and ‘radicals’.”
said that one of the most important things you learned from this is that every ‘enemy’ is a human being and that if you get to know them you no longer see them purely as the enemy. “How do you get locked in a struggle with people? It’s never about individuals. It’s usually about the inequality of power relationships and abuse of power. What I can say is, meeting Jo Berry made me do a lot of serious thinking about my actions in the past. There was this woman, whose father I had killed, listening to me. I found that very disarming. You become aware of your reduced view of this ‘other’. It’s all about breaking down barriers.” You said, “I hurt human beings and I carry that burden with me.” Is that still something that troubles you? How do you deal with it? “It was and is a real struggle. I stand by the course of action we took and the decision to take part in that struggle. But at the end of that, no matter how much I can justify that decision, you still carry this burden of people getting hurt or killed as a consequence. There’s no square in that circle, from my perspective at least. I have no religious way to untie that knot. I think I’m hoping to be less conflicted by doing the work I do now, trying to do some good, deriving some benefit from talking about the past.” <<
Peace talks
After serving 14 years, you were released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. What was your ambition at the time? “I got out when I was 48, into this new atmosphere where we could openly work to build this new Ireland. The only thing I asked myself was, ‘What contribution can I make to this new struggle?’ It’s the same strug gle, but through different means.” It’s been 14 years since you first met with Jo Berry, daughter of Anthony Berry who was killed in the Brighton Grand Hotel. You two have now met more than 120 times. You give lectures and interviews together. You’ve 29 June 2015 / UMagazine
Text Jolien Linssen Photography Harry Heuts
Professor / student
In 1987 Diana, Princess of Wales, shakes hands with a man with HIV. Click, goes the camera, and the picture is seen all over the world. At the height of the AIDS frenzy, this gesture was a huge statement. How different things are today, with HIV now a chronic rather than a deadly disease in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, people living with HIV continue to be confronted with stigma â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a prejudice all of us may be guilty of.
30 UMagazine / June 2015
/ Learning about HIVrelated stig in virtual reality /
gma
“It’s not as extreme as it was in the eighties, when people were afraid to even touch someone with HIV”, says PhD candidate Henna Toppenberg. “In the West today stigma takes more subtle forms. But it’s still there, in a wide range of situations. People living with HIV are less likely to be employed, for example, and once they have a job they have a harder time getting promoted.” “The tricky thing about stigmatising behaviour is that it’s often unconscious”, explains Rob Ruiter, UM profes sor of Applied Psychology and Toppenberg’s supervisor. “People tend not to realise that they treat HIV patients differently.” But the consequences are real, and so research into this behaviour is needed. This is the challenge for Toppenberg and her supervisor, for how can we measure behaviour that is largely the result of unconscious processes? Their answer: in virtual reality.
Virtual reality “We have a fantastic laboratory here that enables us to study social interactions in a highly controlled environment”, says Toppenberg. Enter the Virtual Reality Lab at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuro sciences and the first thing you see is an ordinary room of about fifty square metres. Put on the head-mounted display, however, and you find yourself in a completely different world. “Although you know that what you’re seeing is not really there, your brain tricks you into believing the opposite”, says Ruiter. “I remember testing the head-mounted display at a conference a couple of years ago. Suddenly, I was on a shaky bridge over an >>
Rob Ruiter (1969) studied Health Sciences at Maastricht University, where he obtained his PhD in psychology in 2000. His research focuses on the effectiveness of persuasive messages. He has been professor of Applied Psychology and head of the Department of Work and Social Psychology since 2012. He is also involved in PhD projects in Southern and Eastern Africa.
31 June 2015 / UMagazine
abyss. I found it hard to move, even though in reality I was just standing on normal ground. The great thing about virtual reality is that it enables us to measure behaviour as people actually engage in it in a context resembling real life, instead of having to ask them afterwards: ‘So what did you do?’” To study stigmatising behaviour towards people with HIV, Toppenberg had her research participants enter a virtual hospital room, where they were confronted with a virtual patient diagnosed with HIV, cancer or a broken leg. “When they enter the room, the partici pants know nothing about the patient. Their task is to find out his name and diagnosis, which is written on his wristband and on a board at the foot of the bed. The name of his partner is also recorded on the board, so his sexual orientation is clear.” None of the participants were aware of what was ac tually being measured: the way they behaved towards the virtual patients. “One sign of stigmatisation is keeping an increased personal distance during social interactions, so that’s what we were interested in”, Toppenberg explains. “We found that the participants kept the greatest distance between themselves and virtual HIV patients. The distances were largest when the HIV patient was homosexual.” Strikingly, the participants – healthy, heterosexual students – were convinced that they had approached all patients in the same manner.
Research Gay people living with HIV experience a double stigma, due to not only their disease but also their sexual orientation. Related to this, but not exclusive to homosexuals, are assumptions about personal respon sibility: if you contracted HIV through promiscuous behaviour, isn’t that your own fault? Toppenberg: “In another study, we created a virtual office where participants came face to face with virtual HIV-positive job applicants. We were interested in whether it made a difference if the applicants were open about their medical condition, which was the result of either unprotected sex or a blood transfusion. We expected that acknowledging their disease openly would lead to more understanding and less stigma on the part of the participants, especially if the applicant could not be held responsible for contracting HIV. To our surprise, we haven’t yet been able to confirm this hypothesis.” Trial and error, of course, is all part of the academic game. “We have to acknowledge that virtual reality is a relatively new technology”, Ruiter says. “So we’re still in the process of figuring out the most valid way to do this type of research.”
32 UMagazine / June 2015
It’s also too early to speculate about the practical applications of Toppenberg’s findings. “Our initial goal was not only to show that stigmatising behaviour occurs, but also to come up with ways to reduce it”, she says. “At the moment we’re investigating whether empathy could affect the way people with HIV are approached. If so, it could be used as a tool to reduce stigma.” Another challenge for the future will be to translate the findings obtained in virtual reality into real life. As Ruiter puts it, “To bring about change, we first need to fully understand how stigmatising behaviour works.” <<
Stigma tising behaviour is often uncon scious
Henna Toppenberg (1977) studied social psychology in Leiden and cognitive neuroscience in Amsterdam. She previously worked as a policy adviser at the Ministry of Economic and Labour Affairs in Curaçao. She has been working on her PhD research at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience since 2009.
NWO Vici grants for Leon de Windt and Joris Veltman Two Maastricht professors, Leon de Windt (Cardiology) and Joris Veltman (Clinical Genetics), have been awarded Vici grants. They were among 36 researchers selected by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Re search (NWO) for the grants, which are worth €1.5 million each. This will allow them to con duct independent research in self-appointed research groups over the course of five years. Leon de Windt is professor of Molecular Cardiology at UM/Maastricht UMC+. He studies chronic heart failure, a degenerative heart condition that reduces blood flow to all organs. Based on his findings for a specific type of heart failure, his research team will study the molecules that cause heart disease and develop a new class of drugs to treat it.
News Leon de Windt
Joris Veltman
Joris Veltman has a dual appointment at Radboud UMC and UM/Maastricht UMC+. He will explore the role of spontaneous mutation in the development of mental retardation and male infertility. To do so, he plans to examine the entire DNA profile of children and their parents. In addition, his research team will exam ine whether the number of mutations increases in children born to older fathers and/or conceived by artificial insemination.
Maastricht researcher improves police interview technique PhD research by Alana Krix reveals that Dutch detectives have limited knowledge of the possibilities for extracting information from witnesses. The quality of witness testimo nies can be significantly improved by interviewing them several times: a second interview can generate at least 25% more correct information through new memory recall. However, many experienced detectives underestimate the accuracy of new details generated during follow-up interviews. Krix therefore calls for better police training and a review of existing courses on interview techniques. The results were recently published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. “It’s extremely worrying that police officers seriously underestimate the reliability of witness testimonies”, says Krix. This, in her view, is because detectives lack insight into how human memory works. “Psychologists have long known that ‘reminiscent details’ are a natural part of human memory, and this process of remembering details later goes hand in hand with forgetting details. Police officers should be trained to be aware of this.”
New cancer treatment Combining radiotherapy with a new kind of immunotherapy helps to fight cancer, according to researchers at the Maastricht UMC+ and Maastro Clinic. Their experiments showed that a combination of the two ther apies causes 75% of tumours to disappear. They will soon launch a clinical trial, with the ultimate aim of bringing this new treatment to patients. The results of the study were published in the medical journal Clinical Cancer Research. Most cancer patients die as a result of me tastasis, where the cancer spreads to other parts of their body. Curing metastasised tu mours is next to impossible; treatments like chemotherapy, radiotherapy and targeted drugs mainly aim to alleviate symptoms and prolong patients’ lives. Cancer cells are able to multiply and spread because they are nor mally invisible to the body’s immune system. Working with the Swiss firm Philogen, the Maastricht team has developed a method that prompts the immune system to attack and destroy these cells. “Our latest results, which have yet to be published, also show that this treatment method has an effect on tumours outside the irradiated area. This means we should be able to not only extend the patient’s life expectancy, but also actually cure tumours and their metastases”, says Philippe Lambin, professor of radiotherapy. In the next phase of the study, the combination therapy will be used in patients with a certain type of cancer with limited metastasis.
33 June 2015 / UMagazine
Text Annelotte Huiskes Photography Wilfred van Dellen
Off the job
/ Annual postEurovision depression / “Best Eurovision song? That’s a tough one. Eres tu or Loreen’s Euphoria?” Eurovision fan Wilfred van Dellen can’t decide; there are just so many great songs to choose from. Back in his student days, he arranged for the spectacle to be shown on a big screen at the COC, the association for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Limburg where he worked as a volunteer. But ever since he saw the real thing in 2011, the screen just doesn’t cut it anymore. Now an educational psychologist and teacher/ researcher at UCM, Van Dellen and his partner will head for Vienna in late May to see the 60th song contest. “It’s a sort of bubble – a highly addictive one.”
34 UMagazine / June 2015
This interview takes place a good month before the festival. Still, the trip to Vienna has long been booked and tickets secured for the fan zone. “The fan zone is the area near the stage where the fans stand cheering after every song. It makes for juicy pictures, which are flashed up between performances. After the first time I saw it in Düsseldorf I remember thinking, I’m so close I could throw a can right at the singer’s head, with all of Europe watching. You’re right at the epicentre, jammed into a hall with 30,000 people and all those cameras. You know those images will be beamed live onto TV screens in millions of homes, and I’m standing right in front of it. It’s an overwhelming experience.” Last year in Copenhagen, Van Dellen and his partner happened to get their faces on camera. “It was barely two seconds, during the song by the Greek contestant. Straight away my phone started vibrating and I got dozens of messages: ‘You were on TV!’ “
Parallel universe “At the end of the day I’m still an academic, so I like trying to figure out what I find so great about it. I know it’s kitsch and camp. But what really appeals to me is spending a whole week partying with people from all over the world who love Eurovision just as much as I do. It’s like you’re entering some kind of bubble. For an entire week, you get to immerse your self in a parallel universe where the rules are different to normal life. There’s the constant stimulus of a big stage, bright lights, never-ending music and all those nationalities around you; it gives you a huge energy boost. I always come back fully recharged.” But returning to the daily grind is not easy. “Every year I get post-Eurovision depression, honestly. There should be academic research on this. I think it’s compa rable to what students experience after an exchange programme. After such an intense week I get really bad withdrawal symptoms. Last year I had to get back to work straight away; that was a mistake. Fortunately, this year I have a few days off to recover slowly.”
Social statement Also special for Van Dellen is that, despite the element of competition, there is no aggression. “You’re around all these people with massively in-depth analyses on who’s going to win and, more importantly, who’s not. In that sense they’re a bit like football fans. And yet no one ever gets into fights there because his or her country didn’t win.” In this, Van Dellen sees glimpses of a peaceful and united Europe. A song contest is no place for politics. As he sees it, the audience did wrong to greet the Russian candidate with loud booing after the invasion of Ukraine.
Selfie with the Dutch songfestival representative Trijntje Oosterhuis (on the right is Wilfred van Dellen)
Still, Eurovision is more than just entertainment. According to Van Dellen the statement that last year’s winner Conchita Wurst made, as a woman with a beard, was a very positive one. “She’s also from Austria, which makes it all the more exciting. Over the years the song contest has built up a tradition of shin ing a spotlight on minorities; take Dana International, the transgender Israeli artist who won in 1998. Or this year’s Finnish delegation; they’re a sort of Jostiband [a Dutch orchestra for musicians with intellectual disabilities].”
Selfie with festival winner Måns Zelmerlöw (Sweden)
This, Van Dellen suggests, may explain why the Eurovi sion Song Contest is so popular in the gay community. Both on and off stage, gays, transvestites and trans gender people are well represented. “When I’m there with my partner we’re finally in the majority. We’re not part of 10% of the crowd, but 80%. And for couples from countries where homosexuality is frowned on, it’s really great that they can turn up and just be lovers. It gives minorities the chance to just be themselves.”
And the winner is ... What does winning mean in the context of Eu rovision? In Van Dellen’s view, Anouk did better than her ninth place two years ago might suggest. “She managed to get the Netherlands into the grand final after nine years and put the song contest back on the map here. And she inspired Ilse de Lange to enter the competition as well. Although she and Waylon came second, their song was played all over the world. These days they’re saying the Netherlands has brought some real songs back into the contest. Small, intimate and well executed. And now Trijntje Oosterhuis will be representing us. My partner’s a big fan; I think she’ll make it into the finals, but she won’t win. And I don’t see that as such a bad thing.” <<
35 June 2015 / UMagazine
Text Graziella Runchina Photography Judith van Doorn
Alum Judith van Doorn
Alumni Born and raised in one of Limburg’s smallest villages, UM graduate Judith van Doorn has long been a woman of the world. As a microcredit specialist at the United Nations (UN), she is abroad more often than not. Having lived in the Caribbean, Switzerland and Ethiopia, she is now on her fourth adventure abroad with her husband and children, in Pretoria in South Africa. 36 UMagazine / June 2015
/ From village girl to globetrotter / Her parents, who owned a road construction company, used to ask her if she’d ever consider settling in their village in Vaals. “As a teenager, it was already clear to me that I wouldn’t”, she says. “But back then I could never have imagined that I’d travel all over the world. Holset is a tiny hamlet with only 160 residents. The contrast with the world cities I’ve lived in over the last 20 years couldn’t be bigger.”
Judith van Doorn (1969) obtained a master’s degree in Business Economics at Maastricht University and specialised in Development Economics at Wageningen University. In the Caribbean office of the International Labour Organization (ILO), she was responsible for small enterprise and cooperative development. She has also worked as a microfinance expert at the ILO headquarters in Geneva, and in Ethiopia. She now works for the ILO in South Africa.
Meaningful work Van Doorn studied Business Economics at Maastricht University, but she knew something was still missing. “I realised during the pro gramme that I didn’t want to work in the business sector. So after wards I headed for Wageningen to study Development Economics. I wanted to do something meaningful, to contribute to society. Of course, at that time I had no way of knowing whether I’d actually like it. So I joined a group of women on a cultural exchange and went to Kenya for a month. That’s where I really got a taste for it.”
Excitement Next, through a secondment programme of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she went to Trinidad & Tobago as a UN trainee. “My education definitely helped me get my foot in the door at the UN. Looking back, that combination of business and development economics really suited the vacancy.” She and her husband Raymond spent two years in the Caribbean. “Then I had to find a job in a different location. We ended up at the headquarters of the UN in Geneva, where we stayed for five years. After that, we decided it was time to go back to the Netherlands. I resigned from the UN, we bought a house in Eindhoven and we tried to feel at home there again. But living abroad never lost its appeal.” So when the opportunity arose five years later, Van Doorn jumped at the chance to return to her old employer. Her husband embraced the idea too; and so, with their two sons aged 3 and 5 years old in tow, they moved to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. “We were excited and maybe a bit apprehensive”, she says. “But we figured we wouldn’t be the only foreigners with small children there. After four years I was transferred to Pretoria, and that’s where we’ve spent the last two years.”
Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni
Financial services Van Doorn’s work focuses on local bodies like employers’ organi sations and trade unions. She advises them on how they can provide the people they represent – workers and owners of small- and medi um-sized businesses – with financial services, such as loans, savings accounts or insurance. “And I develop training courses for this target group on how to manage their money.” She also negotiates with local authorities on packages of services, like training and coaching for small-scale entrepreneurs. “This takes me across South Africa as well as southern and eastern Africa; I probably fly two to three times per month.”
Guarded Van Doorn and her family live in a compound 20 minutes from her work, in the outskirts of Pretoria. “The compound is a village in itself. Security is a concern in South Africa, so it’s guarded around the clock. At work I have to go through a barrier as well; you can’t just wander inside. All my colleagues travel a lot, so we’re used to communicating with each other by email. I work in a team with 15 colleagues from 15 different countries. Mainly people from Africa, but also a few from Europe.” Five days a week, the family employs a nanny. “The boys are old enough for school now, so she mainly just has to be with them when they get home. When the kids were younger she helped out a lot more with the actual childcare. These days they speak English fluently and take the school bus to school; a very American thing, but also very practical. “My husband – who also studied at UM – works as well; that’s always been important to him. Fortunately he’s always managed to find work in the places I was sent to, although it wasn’t always easy because of work permits and such. He works in the ‘regular’ financial sector and loves travelling even more than I do. He also loves meet ing people from different countries and cultures.”
Fascinating In some respects the Limburg native envies people who have settled in the Netherlands. “On the other hand, the international way of life is fascinating. Living in the Netherlands again really opened my eyes to that. Once you’ve had a taste of travelling, it’s difficult to get used to being at home again. Our children get on a plane as if it were a bus. Whenever we visit the Netherlands we just take an overnight flight and sleep on board. The world becomes a lot smaller that way, and family and friends are a lot closer.” << 37 June 2015 / UMagazine
Text Jos Cortenraad Photography Rafaël Philippen
Institutional investors are the key shareholders for companies like KPN. Maastricht University alum Wouter Stammeijer has been Head of Investor Relations at the telecom company since February, and as such is responsible for maintaining relation ships with the investors. “Dialogue is essential”, he says.
Alum Wouter Stammeijer
/ Maastricht is a great student city / Alumni
38 UMagazine / June 2015
KPN has thousands of shareholders, if not tens of thousands. But the vast majority of its share capital is held by large, institu tional investors. “Pension funds, investment companies and major investment funds”, explains Stammeijer. “These are the parties you usually don’t see during the annual general meetings for sharehold ers. Those meetings are mainly for private shareholders, who want to find out how the company’s doing and what our plans are. They’re important too, of course, but our relationships with the institutional investors are much closer. For example, we seek them out during our ‘road shows’ through Europe and the USA. That’s something they really appreciate. They want information about our strategy, and certainty that they’ll keep getting good returns. Because whichever
Wouter Stammeijer (1980) studied Business Administration and International Business at Maastricht University from 2001 to 2006. He then completed a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) programme. In addition to his busy job at KPN, he still finds the time to travel and kite surf.
instead. And more time left over for other activities – I have to admit that the programme didn’t call for 60 hours of study per week. I was able to get involved with the student association Saurus and the Inkom introduction week. You can learn a lot from these activities, skills that will come in handy later.” Stammeijer then stayed on in Maastricht for the master’s in In ternational Business, focusing on finance. “It’s really important to specialise in something, to have a clear profile. Business Administra tion gives you a great basis, but you have to stand out at something if you want to end up at a large company. And that was always my goal. Heineken, Philips, KLM, Unilever; any of those big names that are also known abroad. And yes, I also wanted to stick around in Maastricht for a while. It’s nice and small, so you can actually live in the centre. And it has a lot of culture and joie de vivre. People eat out even on Mondays and Tuesdays. I really enjoyed student life there. It might not be as dynamic as the big cities, but it offers you a lot of freedom. I go back at least once a year to soak up the atmosphere.”
ING
way you look at it, an investor wants to see results. Our task is to explain the innovations we’re working on and what we intend to do to ward off the competition.”
Strategic It’s a job that comes with a lot of responsibility and one that fell onto Stammeijer’s plate more or less by chance. “Well, not quite”, concedes the Arnhem native from KPN’s headquarters in The Hague. “I’d already worked in the department for a few years before I was offered the role late last year. It’s an amazing job; it’s international, I travel a lot, I get to have face-to-face contact and work at a strategic level. It suits me perfectly. “But it wasn’t a planned career move. To be honest, I didn’t even know exactly what Investor Relations was until a few years ago. I joined KPN because the company really appeals to me. At ING, where I last worked, I focused on very specialised financial and legal issues. I feel drawn to entrepreneurship, thinking up ideas with others and implementing them together. Of course, my financial background comes in handy in Investor Relations. But holding a management position so soon was definitely surprising.”
Solutions After high school, Stammeijer made a conscious choice for UM’s Bachelor in Business Administration. “I also looked at Groningen and Rotterdam, but Problem-Based Learning in Maastricht appealed to me the most. No long lectures, but solving problems together
After a stint in Singapore, Stammeijer signed up for a traineeship with ING in 2006. “It was great. ING is the most international bank in the Netherlands, and I got posted to New York and Amsterdam. It was the perfect start to my career. But after four years, I started to feel restless. I wanted to work in a company with less hierarchy and more entrepreneurial spirit. And I’ve found that at KPN.” Stammeijer has enjoyed his first months as Head of Investor Rela tions. “It wasn’t completely new to me. But now I’m more involved in strategy. I know how important institutional investors are for a company; it’s their capital that allows us to launch new products. In telecoms you have to keep on innovating and offering your custom ers something new, because the competition is fierce.”
Value Are the Netherlands and Belgium too small for a company like KPN to really spread its wings? And what about the buyers that always seem to be looming on the horizon, like the Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim? “These are really questions for the Board of Directors. What I see is that, as a small player in global terms, we provide added value for investors. My challenge is to maintain these relationships. Investors keep us sharp, ask critical questions and force us to follow a consistent strategy. This is good for all parties – both KPN and its customers. The contribution we make to the Dutch eco nomy is not insignificant, and we should cherish that.” <<
Visit us at www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/alumni
39 June 2015 / UMagazine
Elizabeth Strouven Foundation helps Nigerian student become Global Health expert Ibukun-Oluwa Omolade Adepoju (31) always dreamt of becoming a doctor. But when her older sister died of an asthma attack minutes after she rushed her into a Nigerian emergency room, Ibukun realised it takes more than doctors to save lives. Her sister was the victim of a weak and ineffi cient healthcare system. “Nigeria hospitals – if you can call them that – barely have electricity and water. The system is sick, and if we want to cure patients we need to fix it.”
It was this ideal that formed the starting point for her professional and personal jour ney in Global Health. “I’m very thankful that the Elisabeth Strou ven Foundation decided to support me in achieving my goal”, says Ibukun. She spent the last six years in Ukraine, studying for her medical degree. But as the political situation there worsened, she jumped at the chance to come to Maastricht. She and her fellow students, representing 17 different coun tries, work on case studies that explore the interface between globalisation and health. Examples include management of the Ebola outbreak or the effects of an oil spill in
Nigeria, and the role of NGOs, governments and global institutions in these situations. Ibukun takes home with her an invaluable amount of knowledge, experience and expo sure to different perspectives. Ibukun’s passionate calls for cost-effective, high-quality healthcare in Africa have left a deep impression on both the University Fund Limburg and Dik Mol, member of the Executive Board of the Elisabeth Strouven Foundation. The University Fund Limburg ap peals to foundations, companies and private individuals to change lives by giving talented students like Ibukun the chance to partici pate in UM’s unique master’s programmes.
Prime Minister Rutte at the ninth Maastricht University Dinner Martin Paul, Truze Lodder and Mark Rutte
Joost Pennings
40 UMagazine / June 2015
The ninth Maastricht University Dinner took place on Wednesday 8 April. Two hun dred guests were received at the provincial government building on the Maas by the chair of the Limburg University Fund, gover nor Theo Bovens. During this annual event, national and international companies get the chance to network and seek collabora tions with UM academics. Prime Minister Mark Rutte, at the tail end of his working visit to Limburg, delivered a speech complimenting the guests on their efforts to pursue links between academia and the business world. The after-dinner speech was given by Professor Joost Pennings,
professor of Finance and Marketing & Supply Chain Management at UM. Professor Pennings spoke about risk management as a catalyst for value creation and innovation, opportunities for capitalising on the volatil ity of markets, and knowledge valorisation as a low risk/high return investment for Limburg. The Limburg University Fund and UM are pleased to see that the annual dinner is drawing more and more different companies every year. This allows us to develop broader collaborations. New guests this year were the health insurer CZ, along with APG and Sabic.
US benefactor donates $50,000 to Mark Post Research Fund Last year, UM professor Mark Post made headlines when he unveiled the world’s first hamburger made of cultured beef. Now a pri vate benefactor has donated USD$50,000 to the Mark Post Research Fund, which aims to find sustainable solutions for food production. The anonymous donor stressed the importance of investigating al ternatives to livestock production. The donation was not earmarked for a specific project. However, the donor was motivated by a desire to develop more effective production methods for cultured meat and to improve cultured meat products by adding fat tissue and increasing protein content. The donor also drew attention to the im portance of published protocols and the continued public availability of technology. In the pursuit of these goals, the donor hopes to see open knowledge development in which ethical considerations are prioritised over financial gain.
Limburg University Fund celebrates 50th anniversary in 2015
The Limburg University Fund developed from the Foundation for Higher Education in Limburg (Dutch abbreviation SWOL), which was launched in 1965. This foundation supported the establishment in 1976 of the Rijksuniversiteit Limburg, the predecessor of Maastricht University (UM). Over the years, the university has always been able to rely on the Fund’s support. The Limburg University Fund has helped to make UM what it is today: the most interna tional university in the Netherlands, which stands out for its innovative approach to learning and its global outlook. In addition to building bridges between academia and industry, the Fund has continuously played a pivotal role in helping students, researchers and teachers achieve their ambitions.
The Fund supports scholarships, research projects and special chairs, funds the crea tion of new study and research facilities, and promotes the development of new study programmes at UM.
Mission The Limburg University Fund raises funds for challenging projects that enhance the university’s scientific and social signifi cance and contribute to an enterprising knowledge economy, regionally, nationally and internationally. For this reason, the fund invests in strengthening ties between UM and its alumni, the business sector and other institutions.
The logos of members of the Limburg University Fund Curatorium are shown below. These respected companies and individuals are important supporters of research and education. The Limburg University Fund/SWOL is grateful to its Curatorium members for their commitment to Maastricht University.
41 June 2015 / UMagazine
News Research explains failures in 40 years of administrative innovation
Half of the projects aiming at adminis trative change in the Netherlands between 1969 and 2009 failed, while the other half only partially succeeded. This is the conclu sion of PhD research by Jan Schrijver, a for mer Internal Affairs officer, who investigated 40 years of administrative policy (a total of 24 projects). According to his dissertation De omwenteling die niet kwam (‘The revolution that never happened’), none of the provinces’ many attempts at redistribution were successful, including the recent Rand stad attempt.
Green light for new UM science master’s programmes The strategic programme Kennis-As Limburg, an initiative by UM, the Province of Limburg and other knowledge institutes to invest in regional knowledge infrastructure, is paying off in terms of education as well. The education minister recently approved UM’s plans to launch two new master’s programmes in Biobased Materials and Systems Biology in September 2015. The minister’s approval of the new master’s programmes was based on the positive recommendation issued by the Committee for Efficiency in Higher Education (CDHO). The committee deter mined that the programmes meet the demands of the labour market, science and society. The last hurdle is formal accredita tion, which will be decided on by the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO) in the months to come. The two-year programmes will offer a broad scientific education that builds on the existing Maastricht Science Programme, a unique liberal sciences bachelor’s programme.
42 UMagazine / June 2015
What needs to happen to ensure successful administrative change? Schrijver concluded that top-down changes don’t work. In the last 15 years alone, two plans for introducing top-down policies in the Randstad provinces failed. The programme Andere Overheid, too, was unable to deliver on its promise to introduce a new form of government due to its traditional approach. According to Schrijver, only bottom-up policies developed in collaboration with the community and key agencies have a chance of succeeding.
Stock market losses negatively affect consumer behaviour of individual investors After losing money on the shares of a particular company, individual investors are unlikely to buy products or services from the same company again. Although investment results have little to do with how satisfied a customer is with a company’s product, stock market losses do tend to diminish long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty. These are the results of research by Dr Arvid Hoffmann and Dana Ketteler of Maastricht University, published in the Interna tional Journal of Bank Marketing. According to this study, individual investors are more likely to switch to a competitor after an investment loss, and more likely to complain about the product or service of a firm they invested in. These results contradict traditional financial theory, which posits that investment behaviour and consumer behaviour are unrelated.
Profile Education and research at Maastricht University is organised primarily on the basis of faculties, schools and institutes.
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences • • • •
Politics and Culture in Europe Science, Technology and Society Arts, Media and Culture Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences • • • • • •
School for Nutrition, Toxicology and Metabolism (NUTRIM) School for Cardiovascular Diseases (CARIM) School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI) School for Mental Health and Neuroscience (MHeNS) School for Oncology and Developmental Biology (GROW) School of Health Professions Education (SHE)
Faculty of Humanities and Sciences • • • • • • • • •
Department of Knowledge Engineering International Centre for Integrated assessment and Sustainable development (ICIS) Maastricht Graduate School of Governance (MGSoG) University College Maastricht Top Institute for Evidence Based Education Research (TIER) Maastricht Science Programme University College Venlo Systems Biology Biobased Materials
Faculty of Law • • • • • • • • • •
Institute for Globalisation and International Regulation (IGIR) Institute for Transnational Legal Research (METRO) Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation Policies (ICGI) Maastricht Centre for European Law (MCEL) Maastricht Centre for Human Rights Maastricht Centre for Taxation (MCT) Maastricht European Private Law Institute (MEPLI) The Maastricht Forensic Institute (tMFI) Maastricht Graduate School of Law Montesquieu Institute Maastricht
Colophon Faculty of Psychology and Neuro science • • • • • • •
Graduate School of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience Clinical Psychological Science Cognitive Neuroscience (CN) Experimental Psychopathology (EPP) Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology Work & Social Psychology Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre (M-BIC)
School of Business and Economics • • • • • • • • • •
Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE) Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) Network Social Innovation (NSI) Limburg Institute of Financial Economics (LIFE) The Maastricht Academic Centre for Research in Services (MAXX) Accounting, Auditing & Information Management Research Centre (MARC) European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE) United Nations University – Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), Foundation Social Innovation for Competitiveness, Organisational Performance and human Excellence (NSCOPE) Marketing-Finance Research Lab
Publisher © Maastricht University Chief Editor Annelotte Huiskes Editorial Board Luc Soete (President), Diana Dolmans, Fons Elbersen, Roy Erkens, Ad van Iterson, Jos Kievits, Alexander Sack, Hildegard Schneider, Vivianne Tjan-Heijnen, Sophie Vanhoonacker. Texts Jos Cortenraad, Femke Kools, Annelotte Huiskes, Jolien Linssen, Graziella Runchina, Hans van Vinkeveen. Photography Loraine Bodewes, Wilfred van Dellen, Philip Driessen, Istock, Harry Heuts, Rafaël Philippen, Sacha Ruland, Arjen Schmitz, Paul van der Veer, Dominique Waterval. Translations and English editing Alison Edwards Graphic concept Zuiderlicht Maastricht Graphic Design Zuiderlicht Maastricht Print Drukkerij Tuijtel, Hardinxveld-Giessendam Maastricht University magazine is published in February, June and October. It is sent on demand to UM alumni and to external relations. Editorial Office Marketing & Communications Postbus 616, 6200 MD Maastricht T +31 43 388 5238 / +31 43 388 5222 E annelotte.huiskes@maastrichtuniversity.nl ISSN 2210-5212 Online webmagazine.maastrichtuniversity.nl Facebook facebook.com/maastrichtuniversitymagazine
43 June 2015 / UMagazine
Blow up Want to know which part of Maastricht is zoomed in on? Visit the Facebook page of the UMagazine. Facebook.com/ maastrichtuniversitymagazine
44 UMagazine / June 2015
33 01.15 / UMagazine