Kees Kouwenaar

Kees is Senior Advisor International Strategy at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Head of Office for the Aurora Universities Network. For 20 years, Kees worked at the Netherlands Organisation for Internationalisation of Higher Education (Nuffic), in recognition and credential evaluation as well as internationalisation programme management. After six years of leading a legal development cooperation foundation, he came to the VU as Director for the Centre for International Cooperation, and has also managed the VU’s Strategic Internationalisation Programme. In his present role, he edits the biweekly VU International News, as well as reviewing and coordinating the Mastermind Europe project. Since 2015, he played a key role and is now coordinating the Aurora Universities Network, which unites nine research intensive universities in Europe committed to matching Academic Excellence with Societal Relevance. A product of Jesuit secondary education, Kees studied History at the Protestant VU, though he has been active in international education rather than history since the start of his working life. 

Kees received the EAIE Award for Outstanding Contribution in 2021. Kees initiated the EAIE professional section ACE which would later become the Expert Community Admission and Recognition, served on the Conference Programme Committee, and has played an active role as speaker at several EAIE conferences. He has served on the EAIE General Council since 2018.