My name is dr Leonhardt van Efferink. Since 1997, I have helped many organizations and students with finding an answer to the question “How to make sense of economic and political changes?” Nowadays, I work mostly as a Trainer, Analyst and Lecturer. To see my visual CV, please click here.

As a freelance Trainer, my most popular skills training course is about geopolitical scenario planning. I teach professionals how to better understand the interaction between geography, politics and economics. Both facts and interpretations (i.e. frames) are important in this regard. In addition, this course helps professionals improve their skills to write scenarios and anticipate plausible future events.

My work as a freelance Analyst focuses on country risks in Emerging Markets and Developing Countries. So how vulnerable are the business cycle, government finances and external finances of a country? And how do political and social instability affect these vulnerabilities?

I also work at Maastricht University. There, I am Coordinator for courses on European Economies, Emerging Markets and Country Risk Analysis. I also work as a tutor in the “Environment & Economy” course and as a Thesis Supervisor in several Bachelor and Master Programs. Next to this, I am the Mentor of various students of the Global Studies Bachelor Program. My work at this university also includes organising the “Media Representations and Research Methods” course at Maastricht Summer School. As a spin-off of this course, I give guest lectures about news framing analysis and critical discourse analysis at my own and some other universities.