Organisation: Tilburg University
Website: Personal profile at Tilburg University

The Broker Board

Board member

Prof. Arie de Ruijter studied Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, where he graduated cum laude in 1970. In 1977, he was awarded his PhD on the work of French anthropologist Levi-Strauss. In 1983, he was appointed Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Utrecht University and, since 2000, he has been Professor of Social Sciences at Tilburg University.

His scientific work covers two main areas: the multicultural society, in particular social cohesion and citizenship, and organizational culture and leadership. He is widely published and has supervised some 70 PhDs. Since the mid-1990s, he has conducted several evaluation studies for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has undertaken numerous advice and management tasks for various organizations. In this context, he has been giving master classes to managers on organizational culture, diversity policy and leadership for over 20 years.

Since the 1980s, he has served in many board functions nationally and internationally. He has been dean at Utrecht University and Tilburg University several times, chair of the Social and Cultural Sciences Foundation (SCW) and NWO (1986-1992), chair of the NWO Economic, Social and Spatial Sciences Foundation (ERS) (1994-1997), scientific director of the  CERES national research school (1993-2001), vice-chair of the Scientific Steering Committee (1997-2003, 2005-2008) and president of the Intergovernmental Council (2002-2005) of the UNESCO Management of Social Transformations international research programme in Paris.

Arie is currently the dean of the Humanities faculty at Tilburg University and was the chair of the Foundation Board of the University of Humanistic Studies until 1 January 2013. Since 1 January 2025 he has been a member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) and chair of the Dutch government’s Development Cooperation Committee. In September 2010, he was appointed Officer in the order of Oranje Nassau.