Biography

Prof. Dr. Emeritus Stefan Lievens;
Doctor of Psychological Science was Work leader at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ghent. He teached personnel policy and general psychology at the Economic College Sint-Aloysius Hogeschool in Brussels and at the Higher Institute for Translators and Interpreters in Ghent.
Publications and research in the field of psychodiagnostics, industrial psychology, deontological aspects of applied psychology and developmental psychology work. He is the author of national and international publications on test psychology, personnel selection, graphology, communication, graffiti, medical psychology and applications of psychology in sports and dentistry.
His works such as "Introduction to Psychology" (1999)"; "Is Testing Bullying?" (1980), "Communication, an Evolving Concept, a New Vocabulary" (1981), “Tired and Not Understood” (1999),are widely known.
Lievens is not your average professor. During his time at the University of Ghent, he already wrote popular science books about desired intimacies in the workplace, i.e. “Passion On The Office Floor”(2001), and later on compared the changes in society’s views and behavior on this topic in “From team to intimate: about work romances and office affairs”, and explained the psychology behind graffities and hundreds of jokes about dentists, lawyers, medical doctors. The Flemish press regularly consulted him, liked his clear, uncomplicated, understandable way of explaining the psychology of human behavior.
Many companies in Flanders called on Prof. Dr. Lievens to support them both with graphological and profound psychological testing in the selection of personnel.
Prof. Dr. Lievens belonged to the first post-war generation of Flemish people who saw it as their mission to break through the dominating influence at Belgian national level of the French language in politics, army and industry and pointed out to the Flemish that they can only earn espect for their language, if they act self-consciously according to the rules of ABN (Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands). He remained true to this belief throughout his life. His active commitment to the correct use of Flemish, his mother tongue, was highly regarded. Even when Flanders gained more influence, Stefan Lievens continued to watch over the correct use of the Flemish language. He showed a good example of this, after his friend Gilbert Mertens (a Belgian managing an international communications agency in Paris, France) in the early 1980s with his book “Dites-le en Francais” called on the French-language media to stop blindly replacing French words with English terms in order to be seen as modern by some colleagues. Professor Lievens did not rest until he succeeded, together with his friend (and with the political support of the Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Economic Affairs of the federal Belgian government, Willy Claes, and together with the Flemish State Secretary for Culture Rita De Backer- Van Ocken, and financial support from sponsors such as Kredietbank, Bank Brussel-Lambert, Mercedes-Benz, De Standaard, Time Magazine, Le Soir, Axel Springer Verlag, Dechy-Univas, Rossel, ONAT; World Productions, Autobianchi, Open University ENSA , VAB/VTB, Gazet van Antwerpen, Bell Telephone Manufacturing Cie, among others) , to publish the book “Communication an evolving concept, a new vocabulary“, pointing out out to the dutch-language media their great responsibility and to favor their own language.
Prof. Dr. Lievens was an active Member of the Board of Directors of the Flemish "IJzerbedevaartcomité" (2000-2003).