prof. dr. L.B. (Louise) Meijering
Louise holds a chair in Health Geography and is leading a research programme on Healthy living environments, Well-being, mobility and attachment to place in later life. Key themes include well-being, everyday mobility and place attachment. Her contribution is interdisciplinary work at the intersection of geography, gerontology and public health.
Since 2023, Louise has been working in different international research consotria on the role of the environment in the recovery and lives of people with acquired brain injury. In these projects, her focus is on socio-spatial networks (InHome, funded by Forte, the Swedish Research Council; and Enhancing Quality of Life after Stroke, funded by ZonMw via the Transforming Healthcare Systems programme). As a direct outcome of her previous academic work, she has led the implementation project called Life with Acquired Brain Injury in 2025. In this project, the university works on implementing a tool that aims to improve the 'home- en place-making' of people with acquired brain injury. This project, also funded by ZonMw, will be continued in 2026 and 2027.
From April 2019- September 2025, Louise has worked on a prestigious ERC Starting Grant project called Meaningful Mobility, together with a research team. In this project, she developed and employed an integrative approach to explain mobility practices in later life in relation to well-being. The project focused on in- and outdoor movement, of healthy and impaired older adults, in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and India. The Meaningful Mobility project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 802202).
Furthermore, Louise has led the Dutch part of the COORDINATEs project, about the living environment of older adults who experience memory problems. The project is an international collaboration between universities and companies in Canada and Sweden. It is funded by ZonMw, through the Joint Programming Initiative More Years, Better Lives .
Louise has contributed to a range of externally funded research projects. Some examples: Coaching in Home & Place Making (Quality of Care, 2018-2020; ZonMw), about the care for people with acquired brain injury in their own living environment; and IROHLA (2012-2015; EU, FP7) about the health literacy of older adults.
Teaching and management
Louise lectures in the Bachelors in Human Geography and Planning, and Environmental and Infrastructure Planning, the Master in Population Studies and the Research Master in Spatial Sciences. She attempts to connect her teaching with her research; during classes, but also in the research themes she supervises. She supervises students working on their Bachelorprojects and Master theses, on themes such as ageing, migration, wellbeing and place meaning.
Louise has coordinated the Research Master in Spatial Sciences. Furthermore, she has fulfilled a variety of organisational roles, including vice-secretary of the faculty-wide Exam Committee and participation in the Faculty Council as well as Education Committees. She is currently the vice-chair of the Demography Department and chair of the Programme Committee of the Master Population Studies.
Previous experience
Louise studied Regional Geography (MSc) at the University of Groningen. Her dissertation was a qualitative study about the experiences of transnational Indian IT professionals in Germany. Upon receiving her Master degree in August 2001, she became a PhD student at the Department of Cultural Geography at the University of Groningen. Her PhD research was about the development of intentional communities in Northwest Europe. The study contained a quantitative inventory of intentional communities in the Western world, as well as a qualitative case study on the life course of eight intentional communities in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Dr. Bettina van Hoven was her supervisor, and Professor Paulus P.P. Huigen her promotor. On December 14, 2006 she received her PhD at the University of Groningen. The full title of her PhD thesis is: ‘Making a place of their own. Rural intentional communities in Northwest Europe’.
After receiving her PhD, Louise did several short-term (applied) research projects. For instance, she did a process evaluation of four pilots on integral planning for the Province of Drenthe in Assen. In the spring of 2007, she went to Ghana as a volunteer. There, she participated in a study on the possibilities for establishing a pro-poor tourism project in a small village in Northern Ghana, and taught English and Geography at a secondary school. Upon her return to the Netherlands, she did a postdoctoral research project on the economic effects of agricultural nature conservation in the Northern Frisian Woodlands, a region in the North of the Netherlands. In 2008, she worked at the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. In 2009, she returned to the Faculty of Spatial Sciences and began working as Assistant Professor.
My complete CV is available here.