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Institute managers Wageningen Social & Economic Research appointed

Published on
November 18, 2024

From 1 January of next year, Dr Marieke Harteveld and Prof Hans van Trijp will start as new institute managers of Wageningen Social & Economic Research. Together with Ir Olaf Hietbrink, they will take up the day-to-day management of Wageningen Social & Economic Research.

Marieke Harteveld

Marieke Harteveld will fill the position of institute manager Global Food Systems Transformation. Harteveld studied biology in Groningen and then did a PhD in Tropical Ecology at Georg August University in Göttingen. She held positions at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and Ecofys and worked at IUCN Netherlands as Head Knowledge & Program Development. From 2016 to 2021, she worked at World Wildlife Fund successively as Chief Conservation Officer Netherlands and Global Strategist. Currently, Harteveld is working at RVO where she leads the development of RVO's strategic agenda for Agri-Food Transition.

Hans van Trijp

Hans van Trijp - currently Chair of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour within Wageningen University's Department of Social Sciences - will take up the position of Institute Manager Sustainable & Innovative Value Chains. Van Trijp studied Human Nutrition in Wageningen and also did his PhD in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour there. He worked as a researcher at WUR and at Unilever R&D. Van Trijp has held the chair of the Marketing and Consumer Behaviour group since 2001. From 2001 to 2012, he worked one day a week at Unilever R&D as Senior Scientist Consumer Science. As an ancillary position, Van Trijp has been a member of the Dutch Council for Animal Affairs since 2014. Van Trijp will also stay on as chair holder of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in 2025. A new chair holder is currently being recruited.

Olaf Hietbrink

Olaf Hietbrink will fill the position of institute manager Agricultural Policy and Data Management from 1 January next. He studied Agricultural Engineering in Wageningen, specialising in agricultural organisation and systems science, and worked from 1988 to 1998 at the (former) Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Fisheries and at IKC Agriculture. Hietbrink has worked at Wageningen Economic Research (and predecessor LEI - Agricultural Economics Institute) since 1998, as researcher economic development sectors and team leader of several teams. For the last eight years, Hietbrink has been leading the institute as Business Unit Manager, which has grown into a leading institute in socio and economic research in the green domain.

New institute

From 1 January 2025 Olaf Hietbrink, Hans van Trijp and Marieke Harteveld will jointly be in daily charge of the new institute Wageningen Social & Economic Research, formed by the merger of Wageningen Economic Research and Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation.

Joost de Laat, managing director of the WUR Social Sciences Group: ‘The appointment of Marieke Harteveld and Hans van Trijp gives Wageningen Social & Economic Research two managers who bring with them a great deal of relevant knowledge, experience, and networks, both internal and external. I am confident that with Olaf Hietbrink they will form a strong management team with which the institute will continue to position itself - nationally and globally - as a leading knowledge institute for social and economic research in the WUR domains.’