Dr. Anne Keizer-Remmers, Member Research Group AIHR

As a young student, I studied German Language & Literature at the University of Groningen (RUG) and obtained my master’s degree based on two theses. In the first I looked at the aspect of Dreaming in Arthur Schnitzler’s novels and I compared his literary work with that of his Zeitgenosse in Wien at the Fin de Siècle, Sigmund Freud. My second thesis was on the use of typography in Brecht’s Dreigroschenroman. At the RUG, my minors were Pedagogy and Didactic Methods as I wanted to become a teacher in secondary school – which happened indeed.

Several years and some schools later I started to teach German at CHN, a rather new Professional University in Leeuwarden for Leisure Management. After many years in which I set up the German language programme and a placement network for Germany and Austria, I switched to ISHML - the international stream of the then Dutch Hotel Management School in Leeuwarden. My reason for this switch was the opportunity to set up a programme for international students. I was fascinated by the diversity, different perspectives and ways of thinking and behaving of those international students, whom I had to teach German, using English as the instruction language. Next, I set up introduction programmes for the international freshmen, an international lounge (Hestia – a home away from home), and Rooms for Prayer. I became an autodidactic in the field of intercultural communication and management, which ultimately led me to start my PhD in 2010. In that same year, I initiated and organized a university-wide staff training programme called ‘Intercultural Sensitivity’. To date, this programme is offered to all staff members.

I defended my PhD called ‘Underneath the Surface of Cosmopolitanism’ in 2017. My study is an example of ‘a living educational theory’ (LET), a concept related to ‘the reflective practitioner’ developed by Prof. Jack Whitehead.  For my research, I used a new participatory visual socioanalytic methodology called Social Photo Matrix (SPM) and worked with photographs produced by students, the participants in the study.  The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions that students hold on the philosophical concept of cosmopolitanism that was adopted by their professional university and translated into the university’s strategy. Moreover, I wanted to discover and reveal the participants’ inward images of their (cosmopolitan) educational institute by tapping into their unconscious minds and feelings, bringing hidden dynamics to the surface through collective viewing, associations, amplifications, systemic thinking and reflection. (https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/keizer/keizer.pdf)

I joined the Research group Hospitality Studies at NHL Stenden University in the spring of 2019. My research interests are aimed at the crossroads of Hospitality, Cosmopolitanism, and (Inter-)cultural studies - for instance Halal Tourism, Diversity & Inclusion in Hospitality, Hospitality and Intercultural Competence, Hospitality within the concept of Global Citizenship, and altruistic Hospitality through Meeting the Other, inspired by cosmopolitan values. Currently my students are doing research on ‘Hostmanship’, a newly adopted concept by Stenden Hotel Management School which is yet hardly explored academically.

Publications and Paper presentations:

2019:                    
Keizer-Remmers, A. & Brandsma-Dieters, A. (2019): Global Mind Monitor — determining intercultural competencies of Stenden Hotel Management School students: Setting the Research Agenda. Forthcoming in: Research in Hospitality Management, 10 (1) December 2019.  Advance online publication.
https://doi.org/10.1080/22243534.2019.1700624

2017:
Keizer-Remmers, J. L. C. (2017). Underneath the Surface of Cosmopolitanism. In Search of Cosmopolitanism in Higher Education. Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers.

2017:
Keizer, A. (2017, October). Underneath the surface of Cosmopolitanism: Employing Social Photo Matrix to access the social unconscious of students in Higher Education. Paper prepared for EuroChrie conference in Nairobi, Kenia.

2015:
Meijer, K., Keizer, A., Odekerken, A., & Hoefnagels, A. (2015, October). Intercultural competence, global citizenship or cosmopolitanism? No tower of Babel if hospitality educators join forces. Paper presented at the EuroChrie Experience Conference on 16 October 2015 at MMU, Manchester, UK.