Leo van Wissen is senior researcher and former director of NIDI. He is also professor emeritus of Economic Demography at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen (see https://www.rug.nl/staff/l.j.g.van.wissen/). His research interests include demographic modelling and forecasting, ageing, regional population change, spatial interaction, and regional modelling. He supervised more than twenty PhD’s on topics such as economic-demographic interactions, migration, regional demographic change, ageing, health and wellbeing, population decline, and firm demography. He published numerous articles in international peer reviewed journals on each of these topics and is (co)author of a number of scientific books.
He used to teach quantitative methods and techniques as well as projection models in the master program Population Studies in the Department of Demography at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences. He was also vice-dean of the faculty in the period 2008-10.
Leo van Wissen was educated as a human geographer at the Free University in Amsterdam (MSc and PhD). His PhD (1987) was entitled ‘A dynamic model of household relocation’ and was supervised by Professor Nijkamp. He worked at the Free University, and as guest researcher at the University of California at Irvine and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.
He is former president, and currently member of honour, of the Netherlands Demographic Society NVD, a member of the European Association for Population Studies EAPS, and chair of the board of the European Doctoral School for Demography EDSD. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and has served as member of review committees for both national and international scientific programs.
He is currently the coordinator of the Horizon Europe project PREMIUM_EU, which brings together regional migration, regional development and regional policies, in a web-based application intended to use for regional policy makers: https://premium-eu.org/
Besides demography his passion is in piano playing.
Affiliations
Professor emeritus of Economic Demography at the Population Research Centre, University of Groningen
Ancillary positions (nevenfuncties)
- Former chair of the Netherlands Demographic Society (NVD – Nederlandse Vereniging voor Demografie)
- Chair of the Board of the European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD)
- Member of the Council of Advisors of Population Europe
- Member of the Academia Europaea
- Member of the Expert group Social Demography (Expertgroep Sociale Demografie) of Statistics Netherlands (CBS)
- Former member of the Social Sciences Council (SWR – Sociaal-Wetenschappelijke Raad) of KNAW
- Member of the scientific advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Expertise
Spatial demography, quantitative modelling, projection models
