prof. dr. L.J.G. (Leo) van Wissen

Leo van Wissen is professor of Economic Demography, vice dean of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen, and Director of the Graduate School Spatial Sciences.

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. Leo worked at the Free University, at a consultancy for research on traffic and transport (Goudappel en Coffeng), and as guest researcher at the University of California at Irvine and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. Since 1991, Leo has been working at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), the Hague, also as member of the management team. Leo was appointed as Professor of Demography of Firms at the University of Groningen in 1999. In 2004, he shifted to the Department of Demography and became Professor of Economic Demography. Besides the appointment in Groningen, Leo works at NIDI for one day per week. 

Research interests include mortality, migration, monitoring and forecasting of demographic change, ageing, quantitative modeling and spatial modelling. Most research concerns Europe.