Lieve Van Woensel

Dr Lieve Van Woensel is a foresight expert, heading the Scientific Foresight Service within the European Parliamentary Research Service. This team monitors techno-scientific trends, develops science-policy analyses of future developments in science and technology and analyses how parliaments can anticipate the impact of scientific developments and emerging technologies on citizens’ lives.

Her background is somewhat eclectic. After her master in physics, she obtained her PhD in sciences in the areas of applied biophysics and agriculture (KULeuven, Belgium), with research partly being conducted at the University of Wageningen (the Netherlands). Her studies included climatology. Further, she obtained a degree in business administration (Business School, KULeuven), and studied music technology (Open University, UK). She followed specific courses, such as on strategic use of social media (Open University, UK) and an intensive training on scenario-based foresight (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, United Kingdom).

Her young girls dream was to become an astronaut, even to become the first woman on the moon; she enjoyed her participation at the ESA selection in 1990-1991. However, she stayed with her feet on the ground.

Lieve started working at the European Parliament in 2012 and on the whole have worked for more than 30 years at the science-policy interface. In 2017-2018, she had the opportunity to spend an academic year in Oxford as the EU Fellow at the European Studies Centre in St Antony’s College. She took this academic break for studying the conditions for preparing trustworthy policy advice. The outcomes of her research are available in the book “A Bias Radar for Responsible Policy-Making – Foresight-Based Scientific Advice”, published by Palgrave.

Link to publications authored or co-authored by Lieve Van Woensel at the EP Think Tank