Didi Griffioen PhD PFHEA CFL, is the pan-university professor of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (HERI) since 2018. Her research group focuses on connections between education, research and professional practice in higher education, sometimes resulting in the integration of these activities.

The furthest integration is shaped as transdisciplinarary collaboration that combines innovation and student-learning. Generally, this shape is part of a living lab. Here, together researchers, professionals, students (and sometimes lecturers) create new products, services and processes for professional practices.

Theoretically, the transdisciplinary process is promising because of the integration of perspectives. Practically, it requires much more insight in how different stakeholders integrate their knowledge into an innovation. Sustainable, long term collaboration can only exist if all interests are sufficiently met in both the transdisciplinary process and in the new product. And students can only learn from these complex processes if they can be collaborating partners – at their own level, while fitting for the lab process, with less direction from their programs.

The growth of the importance of research, knowledge and innovation in professional actions influences what ‘professionalism’ entails in students, professionals, academics and university managers. We study the current status quo and development of professionalism in all mentioned groups as foundation for new applicable models for professional development.

Co-curriculum design with lecturers, researchers and students is a special kind of transdisciplinary work. This kind is essential for higher education and therefore has our attention.

Finally, all these topics suggest continuous and ad hoc change processes of the higher education organization. We research these processes in our projects to achieve more effective change procedures.

Didi Griffioen graduated from the Amsterdam Academy for Physical Education and Sports (1998), and from Educational Sciences (MA 2005), Philosophy (MA 2005) and Educational Research (ResMSc 2012) at the University of Amsterdam. In 2013 she succesfully defended her PhD thesis about the implementation of research in higher vocational education at the same university. She is a Principal Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) and a Dutch Comenius Leadership Fellow (CFL) appointed by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. She also fulfilled several roles in academic ‘societies’ in The Netherlands and abroad.

All phases of her professional trajectory have resulted in scientific and professional publications, as well as presentations, for national and international audiences. Her most recent book ‘Creating the desire for change in higher education. The Amsterdam path to research-teaching nexus’ was published in 2023 with Bloomsbury Academic.

Similar books are being written on the other mentioned themes. These books provide an overview of the current scientific status quo, combined with large scale longitudinal research. Therefore, they are applicable as educational material in higher education, and for higher education colleagues in education and research.

For appointments, please contact Madeleine van den Berg-de Zwart, m.de.zwart@hva.nl, +316 288 161 85