Bio Ben Kokkeler

Ben is senior expert and senior researcher on Open Innovation, based in The Netherlands. He has a background in higher education management, in governance and management in the public sector, focusing on themes of organisational change and leadership, innovation and international affairs. He is supervisor of applied research programmes on social innovation with a focus on youth, youth health and citizen science.

Ben studied at the University of Twente, the University of Amsterdam and the Radboud University (Nijmegen), he holds a Master degree in Urban and Regional Planning. In 2014 the University of Twente granted him the PhD degree. His PhD thesis on “distributed academic leadership in emergent research organisations ” was supervised by professors Arie Rip and Stefan Kuhlmann (Science, Technology and Policy Studies) and Olaf Fischer (Organisation Studies and Business Ethics).
Prior to working with the University of Twente and the Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Ben worked for more than 25 years at Dutch and German universities and research institutes, developing and governing international programmes, technology transfer projects and international consortia. Positions that he held were manager strategy and operations at a research institute, director of International Affairs and director of the Graduate School at the University of Twente, Rektorats Projektleiter Hochschulmarketing at the University of Dortmund, Secretary to the Board of a European consortium of universities (ECIU, the European Consortium of Innovative Universities), Chairman of a Dutch-Flemish consortium of science centres, programme manager at the Ministries of Agriculture and Health, research supervisor on ict innovation (social innovation in smart cities).