“Being open to different ideas and perspectives, and collaborating across the boundaries of disciplines, organisations and with societal stakeholders, are essential elements of education in Utrecht.”

Research focus: connecting research, teaching and professional practice, particularly through educating bridge-builders.

Manon Kluijtmans is Dean of University College Utrecht. She is also a Professor at the University Medical Centre Utrecht, where she holds the chair Education to Connect Science and Professional Practice. Previously, she served as Vice-Rector for Education, Chair of the Higher Education Research focus area, and Scientific Director and founder of the Centre for Academic Teaching & Learning.

Her educational research centres on two main themes:

1. Educating dual role professionals, in particularly clinician-researchers and clinician-teachers, who are uniquely equipped to build the much-needed, yet too often missing, connections between scientific research and teaching with professional practice.

2. The development of university teachers in educational scholarship and research to build bridges between scientific theory and teaching practice.

Manon has a particular interest in theoretical perspectives on professional identity development and boundary crossing. A central question in her research is how dual professionals can be educated to act as connectors between different domains, especially between science and healthcare or educational practice. Manon teaches in various advanced teaching-development programmes. Among other things, she leads the Educational Leadership Programme.

Manon has extensive governance experience at both national and international levels. She has served as Chair of the Teaching and Learning Policy Group of LERU, member of the quality assurance committee for education at KU Leuven, and member of the External Review Panel for the University Promotion Educator Track at the National University of Singapore. In 2017, she received the prestigious Friend of Nursing Award from the Sigma Theta Tau International Honour Society of Nursing. She is currently a member of the Supervisory Board of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Areas of interest:
• National and international networks for Teaching & Learning
• Educational innovation
• Open Science & Open Education
• Interdisciplinary, community-engaged and challenge-based education
• Recognition and reward of academic teaching
• Educational research and evidence-informed education