Meet the deans behind the DEB Impact Agenda

Why Economics and Business — and why a joint council

Economics and Business is a comparatively young academic discipline: at most universities it has existed for less than a century. Yet the questions at its core — how do we generate wealth, how do we distribute it, how do we organise the institutions that make this possible — are as old as humanity. One in six Dutch university students chooses a programme in Economics and Business, an indication of how central these questions remain to modern society.

What makes DEB different from a classic consultative body is energy. Sixteen deans who deliberately choose to align — to compare notes, to share what is working, and to amplify each other's initiatives so the field moves faster as one than any single faculty could alone. The Council meets every two months, but the real work happens between meetings: joint projects, shared positions on national policy, and a steady appetite for collaboration with public, private and civil-society partners.

That collaborative reflex is what turns a council into a movement. The DEB Impact Agenda (2023) gave the field a shared language for the five societal transitions that matter most; the annual Impact Forum is where that language becomes conversation; the REmagine Awards make the resulting work visible. The current chapter is about pushing further — more engagement with society, more bridges to neighbouring Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines, and more concrete impact stories from the people in our faculties whose research changes practice.