About

Vitality Academy is a transdisciplinary collaboration between four Dutch academic institutions: Eindhoven University of Technology, Utrecht University, University Medical Center Utrecht, and Wageningen University and Research. We have strong connections with the Strategic Alliance Eindhoven-Wageningen-Utrecht.

The pioneers

The Vitality Academy started bottom up in 2014. A group of multi-disciplinary researchers from Eindhoven and Utrecht universities decided that now is the right time to kick off collaboration in the context of sport and exercise research and education.

These pioneers already then saw the value in knowledge sharing and collaboration in research on sports and exercise in order to not only advance within individual scientific disciplines of initially organizational studies, governance and industrial design. But also to create a pool of transdisciplinary knowledge, in order to achieve significant societal impact.

Research projects

The Vitality Academy collaboration started with international Vitality summer schools and workshops, an international master program ‘Global Master’s Program Sport’ and an innovation project to develop a vitality data platform, Vitality Data Centre. Since the dawn of the Vitality Academy, more Vitality Academy researchers joined their forces to obtain resources for research and education.

Today, teams of three research projects: Vital@2040 (Strategic Alliance EWUU), CISE (ZonMW) and Vitality Data Centre can call Vitality Academy their home base.

New partnership

As of 2020, Wageningen University and Research (WUR) is part of the Vitality Academy. This new partnership continues to elaborate on the concept of vitality.

WUR expertise on health behavior change related to physical activity behavior and food consumption, is expanding VA research and education in the field of sports and exercise towards research and education in the context of a healthy and vital lifestyle. 

Academic network

Today, the Vitality Academy is an academic network joining forces of national academic institutions to build a robust foundation for research and education in and around vitality.

Members of the Vitality Academy are ready to collaborate with (other) researchers and to share knowledge with students, stakeholders and the public.

Vitality Academy

Mission

Our mission is to initiate and realize transdisciplinary research in order to better understand how to improve the health equity in today’s society. We closely collaborate with public and private societal and industry partners and citizens to acquire qualitative and quantitative vitality data in our living labs.

We use these data to build new and improve existing theories and frameworks towards better understanding of health- and vitality-related behaviours.

Vision

Through a solid transdisciplinary research and societal collaborative innovations, the Vitality Academy aims to enable and empower people from all generations, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds to live a fully vital life.

Collaborations & Partners

Academic disciplines

Junior and senior researchers working at:

  • Industrial Design (TU/e)
  • Architecture Building and Planning (TU/e)
  • Industrial Engineering and Innovation Science (TU/e)
  • Human Geography and Spatial Planning (UU)
  • Utrecht University School of Governance (UU)
  • Public Health (UMC Utrecht/Julius Centre)
  • Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles (WUR)
  • Health and Society (WUR)
  • Nutrition Sciences (WUR)

The departments of Agrotechnology and Food Science and Social Science (WUR) are active members of Vitality Academy.

Academic partners

We keep in touch with our (inter)national partners, such as:

  • Fontys Sporthogeschool
  • Hogeschool Utrecht
  • Haagse Hogeschool
  • VU Amsterdam
  • UMC Groningen
  • University of Tsukuba (Japan)
  • University of Technology Sydney (Australia)
  • University of Johannesburg (South Africa)

Beyond academia

In our projects we regularly work closely with public partners (gemeente Eindhoven, gemeente Utrecht, Kenniscentrum Sport en Bewegen), industry (Philips) and societal partners.

VDC

Vital@2040

CISE