Caspar van den Berg Professor of Global and Local Governance Campus Fryslân

The Board of the University has appointed Caspar van den Berg on the new chair in Global and Local Governance at RUG/Campus Fryslân. The world is increasingly interconnected and problems from elsewhere in the world have a major impact on the direct living environment and the interests of national and local communities. That makes public governance at the national, but also at the local level, increasingly complicated. The chair contributes to our understanding of the way in which political and administrative leaders can translate these challenges into effective and legitimate national, regional and local governance.

"Climate change, migration, the euro, cyber security and privacy are examples of difficult policy challenges that we need to face. These matters often cause friction between groups of citizens and the political class, and between the EU and its Member States. The grip on policy issues is decreasing, while polarization and the expectations in the communities continue to rise. How politicians and civil servants can square these issues is what I am going to focus on at the chair in Global and Local Governance, " Caspar van den Berg explains.

Biography

Prof. Dr. Caspar van den Berg (1980) studied social sciences at University College Utrecht (BSc 2002) and international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc 2003). In 2011, he received his PhD Leiden University on a dissertation on the impact of European integration on politics and administration in the Netherlands, France and Great Britain. For this thesis, he received the Van Poelje Annual Prize in 2013 for the best thesis in administrative and policy sciences in the Netherlands and Flanders. In 2013-2014, Caspar was a visiting research fellow at Princeton University in the United States. Until his appointment at the University of Groningen, he is an associate professor at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University.

The appointment of Caspar van den Berg takes effect per 1 November 2017.