Karen Vandevelde

Initially a graduate of Ghent University (Belgium, 1995) Karen Vandevelde holds an MA Degree (1996) and a PhD Degree in Arts (2001) from the National University of Ireland, Galway. This was followed by a number of career switches: she taught literature and drama, carried out research at postdoctoral level, and became involved in research policy and management as an advisor in Ghent University's Department of Research Affairs. Another career switch took place in August 2018: she is now Head of the HR Department at Antwerp University.

Most of Karen Vandevelde’s key projects are to be situated at the intersection of research policies and HR policies, including: the establishment of Doctoral Schools at Ghent University and strengthening a quality culture in research and developing an HR strategy for researchers. In addition, she was closely involved in the policy relevant research centre ECOOM (Centre for R&D Monitoring). She is an expert on Ph.D. trajectories and researchers’ international and intersectoral mobility and evaluations and rewards for researchers. Between 2010 and 2016, she co-authored a number of policy-relevant studies on these topics. As head of the HR department, her role is shifting towards embedding HR policies with strategic management of academic institutions.

She has been an evaluator for the Marie Sklodowska Curie Co-fund programme and has taken on the role of Advisor or Expert in a number of working groups for the Flemish Council for Science and Innovation, the Flemish Royal Academy of Science and the Arts, the OECD (Careers of Doctorate Holders) and the European Commission. She has been closely involved in topics such as the HR Excellence Award of the European Commission, Open Transparent and Merit-Based Recruitment, Intersectoral Mobility of Researchers and Rewarding researchers in an Open Science context.