Dr Mindel van de Laar (M.M.)
Dr. Mindel van de Laar is PhD director of the dual career PhD programme in Governance and Policy Analysis (GPAC2) of UNU-MERIT / Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, Maastricht University. The programme hosts on average 50 part time PhD fellows, and offers workshops, and supervision services. The directorship activities include development of the educational programme, supervision of the first year PhD fellows in drafting their research proposals and following progress of the higher year fellows once content supervisors are assigned.
In addition, she manages a selection of research and training projects, including:
The Evidence-Based Policy Research Methods (EPRM) course, a programme designed with a blended learning concept, to allow working professionals to set their first steps in research design alongside their jobs.
The Community of Learning for Africa project (COLA), a project developed to assess the needs for research and feedback support of researchers and PhD fellows in Africa. The project aims to develop a network and platform with services to be offered to the research communities in Africa interested in similar topics as UNU-MERIT / MGSOG are working on.
She also coordinates the input of our course in Public Policy offered in the Master of Science in Social Protection, offered in cooperation with Heidelberg University, Germany, the National Economics University, Vietnam and Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia. http://master-social-protection.com/
Mindel van de Laar supervises master and PhD fellows with topics in the field of decision making and higher education and capacity building. She offers PhD education in research methods. She is institutional representative in the Association for Public Policy and Management (APPAM).
Mindel is also trained as Co-active life coach (The coaches, CTI). She is actively involved as coach for PhD fellows, enrolled in an individual coaching track, and for master student enrolled via the Premium project (UM).
Mindel holds a PhD in economics and a MSc in International Economic Studies from Maastricht Univerity. She works in the School of Governance since 2006, until 1 january 2015 mainly as director and vice director of the full time PhD programme. Before her employment at MGSOG, she was employed by the Boston Consulting Group, she was global senior analyst for the Corporate Finance and Strategy Department, focusing on strategy issues related to mergers, acquisitions and alliances, using various large global M&A and alliances databases. She also worked on several international projects in transition countries in the field of social protection, both as consultant and researcher.
Relevant recent project activities
- Chair of the expert panel for the evaluation of Doctoral Programme in Economics at Samtskhe-Javakheti State University, National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE) in Georgia, 27-30 October 2019
- Development online courses “Public Policy Processes”, Public Policy Analysis” and “Empirical Exercises in Policy Evaluation”, to offer in cooperation with EVAplan (University of Heidelberg) for the master students Social Protection of the University of Indonesia and University of Vietnam. First offering fall 2019.
- Pilot EDUBadges, UM participant in the SURF pilot to deliver badges for online learning, Jan 2018-June 2020
- Consulting and education for the board of the university on “Developing e-learning programmes for Higher Education”, Kühne Logistics University, Hamburg, Germany, July 2018.
- Leading to Success: Smart Choices and Smart Tools (2017), Project leader, Funded by Surf Stimuleringsregeling Open en Online Onderwijs, budget 122,700 euro.
- EPRM (since 2015), Develop and Programme manager Evidence-based Policy Research Methods, blended learning training programme, 2 cohorts a year.
- COLA (2014-2019), Develop and Programme manager Community of Learning for Africa (funded by UNU-MERIT/Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Online community for African PhD students. Awarded with SWOL funding (October 2014), and WUN funding (December 2015), School of Business Sustainability theme funding (June-November 2019)
Dr Mindel van de Laar (M.M.)
Founder and Director of the blended learning Governance and Policy Analysis dual career PhD programme (GPAC2)
Founder and Programme manager of the blended learning Evidence-based Research Methods and Skills (EPRM)
Programme manager for MGSoG blended learning modules in International Programme in Social Protection (ISPS, with EVAplan/ University of Heidelberg)
Founder and Programme manager online platform “Community of Learning for African PhD students (COLA)”
Institutional manager of online courses development and implementation
Institution Representative of MGSoG at APPAM