Welcome to my website! It is intended as a mix of ‘work archive’ and curriculum vitae. Here, you may find articles, columns, and other publications, plus information about books and other activities.
Evaluation expert and author, with experience in various policy areas, notably foreign policy, public finance, supervision, and road safety: that is in short what defines me professionally.
Since September 2021, I am working as director of IOB, the independent Directorate of International Research & Policy Evaluation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From January 2026, I will proudly take on the responsibility as President of the European Evaluation Society (EES). More information can be found on LinkedIn and on IOB-evaluation.
In addition to all that work: happily married, great son and daughter, music lover, rusty bicycles & cars, and amateur water sports on the waves of the North Sea in front of Scheveningen and The Hague.
In recent years, IOB has conducted many evaluations that have addressed the country’s diplomatic engagement. These studies have yielded significant findings on what makes diplomatic engagement successful. The conclusion is that diplomatic success can be explained through a combination of seven factors: mission, capacity, commitment, teamwork, networking, timing and reputation.
In this essay, theories of change are discussed against the rise of ‘sustainability’ as an important value in policy and evaluation. The essay revisits the strengths and limitations of theory-based evaluation against the need to do justice to complexity, and it makes the case for a new ‘system-based’ theory of change approach. Herein, a theory of change not only serves to express the rather straightforward relationship between ‘measure’ and ‘effect’ but also specifies the necessary system requirements for sustainable impact.
In 2021, after more than eight years, I switched from the Scientific Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV to IOB. Click on the button for the call-to-action. See my CV for previous work experience.
“Can you do what you have to do as a supervisor? And if not, do you ring the bell? Evaluation is the key to effective supervision, says chairman Peter van der Knaap at the twentieth anniversary of the Dutch professional evaluation and supervision association Vide. “If the remedy is worse than the ailment, you can’t settle for that. Then take your role as an evaluator.” An interview in ‘ToeZine’.