Katrien Fransen

I graduated as Master in Physics in 2006 (with great distinction), successfully completed my Aggregate for education (with great distinction), and graduated as Master in Movement Sciences in 2010 (with greatest distinction and the award of best master thesis). I continued my academic studies with a prestigious FWO aspirant scholarship and completed my PhD in 2014 at the department of movement sciences at KU Leuven, where I completed a postdoctoral mandate (201-2016) and my tenure track (2016-2021) and now have a full-time permanent position as Associate Professor. Here, I teach multiple courses in the Bachelor and Master in Physical Education and Movement Sciences (teaching 4 courses, coordinating 8 more), as well as in the MaNaMa Sports Medicine (teaching 2 courses). Furthermore, two of my PhD students have completed their PhD (amongst which Niels Mertens, who received the Young Researchers Award at the previous FEPSAC conference) and are still active in academics as postdoctoral staff. Furthermore, I currently supervise 3 PhD students and 1 postdoc, as well as several research interns, master and bachelor students.

I have published 58 peer-reviewed journal articles (26 as first author and 15 as last author), 16 book chapters, and 1 book. A full publication list can be found on https://lirias.kuleuven.be/cv?u=U0064451. Despite the recency of my work, it has already significant impact (over 3700 citations in total), with 824 citations in 2022 alone. Also on ResearchGate, I am frequently the researcher with the most-read and most-cited publications of the entire Department of Movement Sciences (including 123 members). This publication output has brought my H-index to 33, which significantly exceeds the average H-index for an early-career scientist (Nosek et al., 2010). This is reflected in the m-quotient, which is the h-index corrected for career stage, which in my case exceeds 3. According to Hirsch (2005), scientists with m > 2 are described as “outstanding” and with m > 3 as “truly unique individuals”.

Based on this track record, I have been invited to present keynotes at both national and international conferences. With over 85 conference presentations, my work was broadly disseminated across the world. In this regard, I have also enjoyed establishing close research collaborations with international forerunners in the field, ranging from Australia over Europe to Canada. These collaborations led to joint articles, encompassing in total 60 international co-authors in 24 different countries. These collaborations not only provided me with unparalleled opportunities to learn from experts in the field, but equally guaranteed a broad international audience for my work.

Furthermore, I was invited to become a member of the editorial board of two renowned journals, namely Psychology of Sport and Exercise (Impact Factor: 5.12), and Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology (Impact Factor: 2.86). Furthermore, I have co-edited two special issues for Psychology of Sport and Exercise and for Frontiers.

In addition to the communication to the academic society, I truly value a broad dissemination of our study findings to the field. Therefore, I have founded Leading Insights (www.leadinginsights.be/en), an expertise centre within KU Leuven aimed to increase the knowledge on leadership and identity processes in a range of contexts and to translate this knowledge to the field. This centre enables us to help teams in a variety of contexts to enhance their team effectiveness and well-being, thereby generating an impact on the field of sport practitioners and beyond.