Kristof De Witte is a full professor (gewoon hoogleraar) in Education Economics and Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven, Belgium, and he holds the chair in ‘Effectiveness and Efficiency of Educational Innovations’ (bijzonder hoogleraar) at United Nations University (UNU-MERIT) at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Kristof De Witte is further a Fellow member of the CESifo Network.

The research interests of Kristof De Witte comprise education economics, performance evaluation, and political economy. Among his more than 100 Web of Science publications, he published 73 papers in Q1-journals from which 29 papers in top-10% journals and 12 papers in top-5% journals. Thanks to funding from multiple national and international organizations, he has a strong track record in leading and coordinating large research projects. Stimulated by interdisciplinary research funding, his work touches upon multiple disciplines which is reflected in publications in the leading journals from various academic fields, including ‘American Sociological Review’, ‘The Economic Journal’, ‘Journal of Urban Economics’, ‘European Journal of Operational Research’, ‘Government Information Quarterly’, ‘Economics of Education Review’, ‘Labour Economics’, ‘Exceptional Children’, ‘World Development’, and ‘Educational Research Review’.

Kristof De Witte shows a deep commitment to public dissemination of his research. To increase societal impact, he is actively disseminating his research output to Dutch field journals, policy journals and media. De Witte’s work has been frequently featured (more than 250 times) in national and international media including CNN, the New York Post, the Washington Post, La Presse and El Pais. Multiple of his papers have had a documented impact on policy making through invited seminars at and citations by the European Commission, European Parliament, the OECD, and the Flemish Parliament. He served as an expert in the ‘European Commission Expert Group on quality investment in education and training’. He is an associate editor for ‘International Transactions in Operational Research’, and former guest editor in three academic journals.

De Witte is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the ‘2021 Pioneer Award’ of KU Leuven (10,000 euro), the ‘2020 Laureate of the Academy’ award from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (10,000 euro) and the ‘2021 CELSA Service to Society Award’ (honorific), two international prizes for his doctoral dissertation (Biennial "Edgard Milhaud" Prize of CIRIEC – 10,000 euro; Annual “Hans-Jürgen-Ewers-Prize”– 2,500 euro), eight paper prizes, an award for his undergraduate thesis, and an award at the end of secondary education. De Witte was keynote speaker at 16 academic conferences. Under his supervision, 16 PhD’s were successfully defended. He spent academic visits at, among others, Columbia University, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung and Aston University. His Google Scholar citation page counts more than 7,000 citations, an h-index of 44 and an i10-index of 95, while his ResearchGate Interest Score amounts to 3,100. According to IDEAS (last 10 years publications ranking), he is ranked among the top 5% economists world-wide.     

At UNU-MERIT, Kristof De Witte is the coordinator of the European project ‘All Inc!’. All Inc! promotes inclusive education by bringing together pupils, (trainee) teachers and the wider school community to build LGBT+ friendly schools. All Inc! is active in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. Further information from http://allinc.eu