Ludo Koks has been working for over 8 years in public affairs at Utrecht University. Utrecht University is one of the 12 Dutch universities, a comprehensive university founded in 1636, and momentarily educating plus 30K students, out of which 15% comes from abroad. Koks focuses on intensifying the strings between national government and the university and the coordination of both knowledge agenda's, in fueling political debates and government papers with facts & figures, knowledge and advice by Utrecht researchers. In the years before his public affairs activities at Utrecht University he was a spokesman for the Executive Board for six years. Koks was deputy director of UU ‘s Department of Communications and Marketing. His main responsibilities in these years concerned public relations, positioning, branding, external relations – apart from management responsibilities. Koks started his career in the Dutch publishing sector as editor and later editor-in-chief of several marketing journals.
Universities cannot play lipservice to the engagement with the outside world challenges any longer: they have to take their role sincerely in contributing to solutions for societal problems. Universities are only discovering their structural relationships with relevant target groups of politicians and policy makers.
However, both countries and universities vary in their organization and policy of public affairs activities. This presentation testifies of a few concrete public affairs studies: the way PA is organized within universities in a few different countries, the collaboration of PA with communication professionals, concrete examples, pitfalls and lessons learned.
Presentation with Denis Ancion