Welcome to Francine Schneider: our new PhD Community Coordinator

Tel us a little bit about yourself, Francine 

I work as an assistant professor at the Department of Health Promotion (research line Promoting Health and Personalized Care) and divide my time between teaching and doing research. Even though time is divided, content-wise I’m lucky to have a mutual focus in both teaching and research, which is planned and systematic health promotion (How can we understand why people do what they do and how can we optimize and facilitate this health behaviour?). Most of my teaching is linked to the master’s programme in Health Education and Promotion, and the bachelor’s programmes in both Health Sciences (track Prevention and Health), as well as University College in Venlo. In addition, I’m also lucky to be involved in the supervision of several (external) CAPHRI PhD candidates. This latter is something that I enjoy, and which has stimulated me to apply for the current position of Community Coordinator.

What will be your task as a PhD Community Coordinator? 

Within CAPHRI we have a big community involving a large amount of PhD candidates and their supervisors. In my new role I hope that we can preserve this community and, ideally, even further broaden, tighten, and enhance it. You can therefore expect that my focus will be on warmly welcoming new PhD candidates and supervisors, as well as on further optimizing the existing CAPHRI PhD programme for all involved. I’m very excited to get started and to meeting all of you in person! In the next couple of months, I will do my best to personally reach out to as many CAPHRI colleagues as possible, to get to know you and to collect all feedback and tips you might have for me. In the meantime, please also never hesitate to approach me directly (francine.schneider@maastrichtuniversity.nl).