Katrien Van Poeck has a PhD in educational sciences (University of Leuven, 2013), a master’s degree in social work (Ghent University, 2006), and a bachelor’s degree in socio-cultural work (1998). She also completed social sciences teacher training (2006). Katrien is a research professor at Ghent University’s Department of Educational Sciences as well as an associated member of the Centre for Sustainability Studies. She is a member and co-founder of the international research collective TePlab - The Laboratory for Teaching Practices. Together with the team she coordinates, Katrien conducts research on three themes: (1) sustainability didactics in formal education and non-formal learning settings, (2) education’s role in a democratic society - in particular regarding addressing societal problems and transformations in the classroom, and (3) teacher professional development and educational change in relation to the two other topics. Her work is largely inspired by pragmatist theory and the Northern European educational research tradition of ‘Didaktik’. She is particularly interested in developing methodologies for empirical research that contributes to opening the black box of teaching and learning processes and applying these to a variety of case studies. Currently, among other things, Katrien is the Principal Investigator of the LESTRA-project funded by the European Research Council and the coordinator of the international scientific network ‘Sustainability Didactics – SUDI’ funded by the Research Foundation Flanders. She also has a special interest in the relation between educational research and practice. She establishes co-creation initiatives in collaborative settings with researchers and practitioners, e.g. through Lesson Design Workshops. Before joining Ghent University in 2016, Katrien worked in NGOs and youth work organisations (1999-2002). As a policy advisor for the Flemish government, she was responsible for sustainability education policy preparation and implementation and related capacity building initiatives (2002-2016). She also worked as a voluntary scientific staff member at Leuven University's Laboratory for Education and Society (2009-2015), was affiliated to Uppsala University (Sweden) with a Marie Curie individual fellowship (2020-21, part-time) and worked as a visiting researcher for Saskatchewan University (Canada, 2015), Uppsala University (2019, 2021-2024) and Malmö University (Sweden, 2024-2027).