Prof. dr. Tom KUPPENS

Tom Kuppens is associate professor in economics and sustainability education at the School for Educational Studies and the Centre for Environmental Sciences (CMK) of Hasselt University (UHasselt). He is also visiting researcher at the Brussels Research Institute for Teacher Education (BRITE) of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the Department of Education at Uppsala University (Sweden). From 2021 until 2025, he was one of three co-presidents of COPERNICUS Alliance, the European Network of Higher Education for Sustainable Development. His research lies at the intersection of economics, sustainability, (global) citizenship and democracy education. Research topics include, among others, the development of a didactical framework for teaching social ecological economics, teacher professional development for sustainability and citizenship education, sustainability education in urban contexts, assessment of transformative learning for sustainability and the role of the educational space. Research contexts include diverse settings across different education levels (from primary to higher education, including TVET), different disciplines (economics and STEM), and different geographical scopes (urban education, mostly within Europe, but also in connection with the Global South).