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Staff
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Prof. dr. Chris de Neubourg
Academic Director
Room 1.012
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The Graduate School of Governance sure is an adventure and being able to lead the 'expedition' is a privilege. Personally I feel well equipped to take up the task. By having studied social sciences, philosophy and economics, my personal foundations have been laid for an open minded but disciplined view on the role of social sciences in policy design and policy analysis.
As a student I have been fascinated and inspired by some of my professors and many publications that I have studied. Although my own career in applied policy work for the consultative council for the chemical sector in Brussels has been short-lived (one and a half year only just after graduation from the University of Louvain), I devoted much of my research work to empirical and applied analyses. It was, and partly still is, considered as slightly out of fashion but it never failed to keep my attention lively.
My eight years at the Economics Department of the University of Groningen were important in the sense that I could work with sociologists, anthropologists and economists in the sub-department that was named in the beginning Sociological Economics and later Economic Growth and Development. I made many friends and learned tremendously from our heated debates and from the experience of senior economists. Since my wife Jo Boon and I agreed that we could define the place were we lived and worked each in turn, I followed her (and her job) to the south of the Netherlands and I joined the new team that set up the brand new Faculty of Economics and Business in Maastricht.
In Groningen I could follow up on the pioneering work of my colleagues; in Maastricht I was among the pioneering crew myself. Seeking new challenges almost became a second nature and I pushed new initiatives in graduate and undergraduate teaching such as International Economic Studies and Social Protection Financing. In the last case my enthusiasm was matched by the inspiration and the slightly workaholic efforts of Michael Cichon of the ILO. After refusing job-offers from the World Bank I got nevertheless involved in its work by being involved in their (and others') projects first in the transition economies and later in developing countries. The projects transferred me literally, though temporarily, to the edges of the world and to very different civilisations. I learned to be patient in understanding the peculiarities of economies as divers as Latvia, China, Bulgaria, Tajikistan and Mauritius, to name but a few.
These experiences complement my scientific work and my academic experiences during longer stays at Harvard University and the European University Institute in Florence. Teaching experiences in Paris (SciencePo), Tokyo (Nihon), Denver and Liege made me well aware of what an international classroom is and should be. In all these places and in Groningen and Maastricht, I learned to value good interpersonal relationships and friendship for embarking on the ambitious endeavours that I undertake.
The School of Governance is in the first place a community of scholars, but I am convinced that it is and should also be a human place where demanding studies and research projects fit in an environment that feels a little bit like a family. The place that I call home is where Jo, Sebastiaan and Elise are, but friends and fellow travellers on the adventurous trips of the School of Governance also belong a little bit to 'home'.
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