prof.dr. R (Rens) Vliegenthart

Rens Vliegenthart has been professor and chair holder of Strategic Communication at WUR since July 2022. Before that, he was professor of Media and Society at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam and also scientific director of ASCoR between 2018 and 2022. Rens received his PhD in Social Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2007 (cum laude) and was a researcher at the University of California, Irvine and Syddansk Universitet.

His research focuses on media content and effects, both on citizens and public opinion, as well as on politicians and political decision-making. Rens is specialized in (computer-based) content analysis and time series analysis. His research has been published in a wide range of journals in communication science, political science and sociology, and he has been awarded several major research grants from the NWO (VENI, VIDI, NWA). He is currently working, among other things, on a cross-national comparative project on knowledge resistance. In addition, he is involved in several infrastructure projects, including the ODISSEI Media Content Analysis Lab, the H2020 OPTED project on analysis of political texts and as a country representative in the MEDem (Monitoring Electoral Democracies) initiative.

Rens is also editor of the popular science blog StukRoodVlees. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of NWO - Social Sciences and Humanities, and of the Communication Council of Statistics Netherlands (CBS).