Prof. Klaas Sijtsma, Rector Magnificus

From 2011 to 2017, he was the Dean of the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Sijtsma is also Professor of Methods of Psychological Research.

'With our unique orientation we contribute to solving the challenges society faces today'

'Dutch universities have been developing from small and elitist in the 1950s to large and accessible to nearly everybody with the right diploma today. In addition to growing student numbers and accessibility, we have been witnessing a rapid internationalization in recent years. Students and scientists from all over the world join us to work together. As a result, today we are a bilingual university, offering many educational programs in English (often next to Dutch) taught by our international faculty.

Tilburg University focuses on education and research in the social sciences and humanities, including, among other things, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, communication and cognition, data science, economics and management, entrepreneurship, human resource studies, labor law and social policy, medical psychology, philosophy, private and business law, social psychology, sociology, and theology. Our focus in our teaching and research is unique in the Netherlands, and puts us in a strong position to contribute to solving the challenges society faces today, such as the aging population, climate change, migration, and health care.

Tilburg University continuously faces the issues of how to integrate knowledge from other disciplines into its social science and humanities orientation to further enrich education and research and provide better solutions. For example, our increasing focus on artificial intelligence, data science, and digitalization in various areas provide us with powerful tools for this further enrichment. This is a great challenge that requires us to do our utmost and improve ourselves beyond what we are already doing.

Tilburg University is simply a great community to be part of, offering a rich portfolio of the best educational and research programs, while at the same being capable of critically considering its own functioning. This entails looking at the way scientific research is conducted nowadays, varying from the preregistration of research to storage and access to data, and at continuously improving our educational facilities including modern lecture halls and online testing, as well as instruction by the finest lecturers.'