Mr. Dr. Raôul Oudejans is a movement scientist and has been working at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam since 1991, as a senior lecturer since 2011. In 1996, he received his PhD with the thesis “The Optics and Actions of Catching Fly Balls” on the visual control of catching high fly balls in baseball. He is also a special professor of Sports and Performance Psychology at the Hogeschool of Amsterdam, in the Faculty of Physical Activity, Sports and Nutrition. The lectureship falls under the cooperation between the VUA and HvA under the banner of the Amsterdam Institute of Sport Science.

Raôul has always been fascinated by the enormous movement skills with which we interact in and with our environment, and the infinite possibilities we have to become better at this, such as in sports, music and dance. He therefore conducts research into perception and movement in sport and other performance domains with an emphasis on the influence of psychological factors on performance and learning. In recent years, his research has specialized in sport and performance psychology in general and in the visual control of the basketball shot (and other sport skills) and training and performance under pressure in sport, the performing arts and the police in particular.

He has more than 115 international scientific publications to his name, as well as eight book chapters and four books, including the study book Sport Psychology (Bakker & Oudejans, 2012, 2019, Nieuwegein: Arko Sports Media). Training for Excellence (https://www.hva.nl/urban-vitality/gedeelde-content/contentgroep/t4x/t4x.html) is a central theme where collaborations in living labs, such as at the dance departments at the Academy of Theatre and Dance, involve co-creating solutions around that theme that are actually implemented in practice.