Leo J.G. van Wissen - Biography#

Prof. Leo J.G. van Wissen (1956) is director of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute NIDI since 2010, and professor of Economic Demography at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen since 1999.

He was trained as human geographer at the Free University in Amsterdam MSc and obtained his PhD within the faculty of Economic Sciences and Econometrics of the same university in 1987. In the years 1988-1991 he was appointed Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW. During this fellowship he held a position as assistant professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences and Econometrics of the Free University in Amsterdam, and spent two years at universities broad, one year at the University of California at Irvine, and one year at the Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium.

He was appointed Professor of Economic Demography at the University of Groningen in 1999 and was appointed director of the Graduate School of Spatial Sciences from 2006-2010 as well as vice dean of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences in 2008-2010. His teaching is in the area of analytical and formal demography, as well as forecasting.

His research interests include spatial modeling, migration, mortality, monitoring and forecasting of demographic change, and the demography of the firm. Most of his research is interdisciplinary in nature, and it is often at the European level.
He supervised 10 completed PhD projects and has five current PhD students.

He was vice chairman of the Netherlands Association of Demography, chairman of the Regional Science Association Netherlands, and served in various scientific review committees, both nationally and internationally.