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About our research

At the Open Universiteit research takes place within research programmes. In these programmes the university focuses on specific topics of the Dutch National Scientific Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nationss.

Innovating for Resilience

The Open Universiteit has one multidisciplinary programme: Innovating for resilience.

The research program contains several themes that can be grouped along four societal challenges. So-called 'turning points' form the common denominator of all research projects within these four challenges:

All faculties contribute to this research.
In the period before 2024, Innovating for Resilience focused on the following three lines of research:

Disciplinary research

The six faculties define their research goals in disciplinary research programmes for each department. These are five year programmes. You can download the programmes below.

The research pages of the departments describe projects, teams, publications and other news.

National Scientific Agenda
Within the Dutch National Scientific Agenda the Open Universiteit focuses on three themes:

Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015 the United Nations defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals aimed at ending global challenges such as poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030. The Open Universiteit wants to contribute to these goals through her research efforts. The VSNU (the Association of Dutch Universities) makes these efforts visible in monthly online magazines.

UNESCO
Collaboration with UNESCO has led to threeUNESCO Chairs at the Open Universiteit:
- UNESCO chair Technology-enhanced Learning for Sustainable Development
- UNESCO chair Knowledge Transfer for Sustainable Development Supported by ICTs (2009-2014; 2014-2023)
- UNESCO chair Open Educatio (2017-2020)