Who we are
UGent @ Work unites 29 professors from 7 UGent faculties and 12 UGent departments who conduct research on work and the labour market.
Stijn Baert
Department of Economics (EB21)
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Bio: The research of Stijn Baert is mainly situated in the broad field of labour economics. His specific research interests are the transition from school to work, labour market discrimination, and work and health. Methodologically, he is an expert in setting up field experiments.
Piet Bracke
Department of Sociology (PS04)
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Bio: Piet Bracke conducts mainly socio-demographic and health sociological research. His current research interests are educational and health inequality, reproductive health, mental health, and the organisation of mental health care and formal health use and/or medical consumption. Methodologically, he is an expert in cross-national, comparative research.
Filip De Fruyt
Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology (PP07)
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Bio: Filip De Fruyt develops methods to measure differences between people (personality, interests, aspects of cognitive functioning, ...). He also examines how these differences develop during life and the professional career. Additionally, he examines and advises organisations and governments on employability and skills for the 21st century and how these can feature and be developed in education and at work.
Lutgart Braeckman
Department of Public Health and Primary Care (GE39)
Bio: Lutgart Braeckman mainly conducts research on health at the workplace. Her research interests are occupational diseases and work accidents, job stress, burn-out, depression, and re-integration on the labour market after labour market drop-out. Methodologically, she is an expert in survey research.
Sarah Van Hoof
Department of Translation, Interpreting, and Communication (LW22)
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Bio: The research of Sarah Van Hoof is situated mainly in sociolinguistics. Her research interests are the role of language in the employment of foreign speaking newcomers and attitudes towards language variation in professional contexts and 'gatekeeping' contexts such as job interviews. This way she tries to identify accent bias and discrimination based on language.
Patrick Humblet
Department of Criminology, Criminal Law, and Social Law (RE23)
Bio: Patrick Humblet conducts research in labour law. His research interests are collective labour law, strike law, social dialogue, and social elections.
Lieven Annemans
Department of Public Health and Primary Care (GE39)
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Bio: The research of Lieven Annemans is mainly situated in the broad field of health economics. His research interests are life quality and the cost efficiency and the management of health care. His methodological expertise consists of meta-analyses and randomised controlled trials (field experiments).
Els Clays
Department of Public Health and Primary Care (GE39)
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Bio: Els Clays mainly conducts research on the impact of the work environment on health and wellbeing of employees. Her specific research interests are psychosocial risks and physical workload and how both are linked to sustainable employment. Methodologically, in both observational and interventional research she uses survey instruments and objective measurements through motion indicators, physiological monitoring devices, and smartphone sensors.
Wouter Duyck
Department of Experimental Psychology (PP02)
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Bio: The research of Wouter Duyck is situated mainly in cognitive psychology. His research interests are psycholinguistics and bilingualism, language development, dyslexia, aphasia, education, and orientation and selection tests for higher education. Methodologically, he is an expert in experimental software and devices, computational modelling, and eyetracking in applied research such as job interviews.
Greet Van Hoye
Department of Marketing, Innovation, and Organisation (EB23)
Bio: In the broad domain of Human Resource Management (HRM) Greet Van Hoye examines the inflow of people in organisations. She focusses on attractiveness of organisations and employers, both for potential new hires as well as for current employees. Her specific research interests are recruiting, employer branding, employer image, word of mouth, and job search behaviour.
Adelien Decramer
Department of Marketing, Innovation, and Organisation (EB23)
Research Explorer and Twitter profile
Bio: The research of Adelien Decramer is situated in the field of Human Resource Management (HRM). Her research interests are performance management, team effectiveness, and job satisfaction.
Mieke Audenaert
Department of Marketing, Innovation, and Organisation (EB23)
Bio: Mieke Audenaert mainly conducts research in the field of Human Resource Management (HRM). Her research interests are performance management, job satisfaction, and burn-out.
Dirk Buyens
Department of Marketing, Innovation, and Organisation (EB23)
Bio: The research of Dirk Buyens is situated in the field of Human Resource Management (HRM). His research interests are job satisfaction, people management and leadership, career management, strategic personnel management, and organisational development.
Katia Levecque
Department of Work, Organisation, and Society (PP09)
Bio: Katia Levecque is specialised in employment and wellbeing at work. In particular she is interested in uncertain employment, psychosocial work conditions, workable work, negotiation and mediation, and gender and diversity. As director of ECOOM she is also interested in the wellbeing and performance of doctoral students and their later careers.
Bart Wille
Department of Work, Organisation, and Society (PP09)
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Bio: In his research Bart Wille examines differences between people (in terms of personality, interests, competences, leadership style,...) and how these impact their behaviour in professional organisations and the decisions they make when building a professional career. The research of Bart Wille has a strong methodological focus in which he uses innovative techniques to adequately map the differences between people and their professional environments.
Eva Derous
Department of Work, Organisation, and Society (PP09)
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Bio: The research of Eva Derous focuses on recruitment and selection procedures in organisations. Her specific research interests are related to diversity and discrimination in recruitment and selection.
Bert Weijters
Department of Work, Organisation, and Society (PP09)
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Bio: The research of Bert Weijters is situated in the broad field of consumer and organisation behaviour. He is interested in the methodological challenges in constructing surveys and the subsequent data analyses. He applies his methodological insights in research on – among others – employer branding.
Peter Vlerick
Department of Work, Organisation, and Society (PP09)
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Bio: Peter Vlerick mainly conducts research in the field of labour and health psychology. His research interests consist of the development and application of knowledge in organisational psychology with a focus on increasing the quality of labour and the safety, health, and wellbeing of employees.
Frederik Anseel
Department of Work, Organisation, and Society (PP09)
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Bio: In his research Frederik Anseel studies how individuals add to the succes of organisations and what role motivation and leadership plays in this. His methodological expertise is randomised controlled trials (field experiments).
Bart Cockx
Department of Economics (EB21)
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Bio: Bart Cockx conducts research on the evaluation of labour market policy. His current research interest are the determinants of search behaviour of unemployed people. Methodologically, he is an expert in micro-econometric modelling used to assess the causal impact of policy interventions.
Luc Van Ootegem
Department of Economics (EB21)
Bio: Luc Van Ootegem focuses on measuring and evaluating individual wellbeing, both in general and at work. He examines alternatives for popular wellbeing and satisfaction measures which take into account personal preferences. Additionally, he conducts research on work quality for specific groups such as older employees.
Elsy Verhofstadt
Department of Economics (EB21)
Bio: Elsy Verhofstadt focuses on measuring and evaluating individual wellbeing, both in general and at work. She examines alternatives for popular wellbeing and satisfaction measures which take into account personal preferences. Additionally, she conducts research on work quality for specific groups such as older employees..
Bert George
Department of Public Governance and Management (EB25)
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Bio: Bert George mainly conducts research in the field of public management and behaviour. His research interests are the processes and behavior underlying public strategy and the drivers and characteristics of public sector performance. Methodologically, he uses survey data, meta-analyses, and (field) experiments.
Eveline Schollaert
Department of Marketing, Innovation, and Organisation (EB23)
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Bio: The research of Eveline Schollaert focusses on the sustainable relation between organisations and its employees. Her current research interests are ambassadorship of employees, stimulating lifelong learning, alternatives for feedback and evaluation, and the triangle leadership-organisational design-HRM.
Mariek Vanden Abeele
Department of Communication Sciences ()
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Bio: Mariek Vanden Abeele studies how 'being always available' changes our life and our society. In her ERC project on Digital Wellbeing Mariek explores the role of digital connectivity in the balance between our working lives and our private lives. Methodologically, Mariek makes use of longitudinal data (smartphone logging, experience sampling) and etnografic research methods.
Amy Van Looy
Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management (EB24)
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Bio: Amy Van Looy studies work processes of organisations and how they contribute to better organisational performance. She investigates how new technology (such as robotica, Internet of Things, blockchain) can foster innovation (through digital transformation), including the adoption of end users and related changes in work and skills. Additionally, she is interested in the IT sector as bottleneck occupation and the underrepresentation of women in this sector.
Tijl De Bie
Department of Electronics and information systems (EA06)
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Bio: Tijl De Bie is currently most actively interested in data-driven Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more specifically in the foundations and applications of (exploratory) Data Science. His focus is increasingly on automating Data Science, human-centric AI (interactivity, privacy, explainability, fairness), and structured data such as graphs.
Gosia Kozusznik
Department of Marketing, Innovation and Organisation (EB23)
Research Explorer
Bio: Gosia Kozusznik focuses on bringing stress to the team level as predictor of well-being and performance dynamics in organizations. She studies stress appraisal and the role of collective processes (e.g., conflict, conflict management, collective coping) for team outcomes. To this end, she complements self-reports with biomarkers (e.g., hormones, cardiovascular markers, sleep).
Jelle Janssens
Department of Criminology, Criminal Law, and Social Law (RE23)
Research Explorer
Bio: Jelle Janssens focusses on transitional justice, radicalization, organized crime, corruption, and police reform in Belgium and abroad.