Hans Henrik Knoop
Hans Henrik Knoop is Associate Professor and Director of the Positive Psychology Research Unit at Aarhus University, Denmark. He also serves as Extraordinary Professor at Optentia, North-West University in South Africa, and as Associate Editor at Frontiers of Psychology's Positive Psychology Section. He is an educational psychologist and specialized on creativity and ethics in his doctoral work. His work is focused on flourishing in education, work, and society with a strong interdisciplinary approach. His research within positive psychology has involved thousands of educators and leaders and data on well-being from almost 300.000 Danish pupils. At Aarhus University he has co-directed the Master Program for Positive Psychology for a decade, and has hosted international conferences relating to education and positive psychology in Denmark in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2017 and 2021. He was the President of the European Network for Positive Psychology for two terms from 2010 to 2014, served on the IPPA Board of Directors from 2009 to 2016 and is currently serving on IPPA’s Council of Advisors.
Hans Henrik Knoop was the host of the 5th European Conference on Positive Psychology (ECPP) in Copenhagen in 2010, and co-responsible for 6th ECPP in Moscow in 2012, and the 7th ECPP in Amsterdam in 2014. From 2007 to 2011 he was Research Director at the Universe Research Lab in Denmark heading a team of researchers focusing on combined engagement, excellence and ethics in education, involving approximately 10.000 pupils, 1.500 teachers and 150 school leaders. From 2006-2009 he was academically responsible for the Danish TV-program Plan B and follow-ups – focused on bringing positive psychology to bear on pupils with reading difficulty. The first series of the program ran for six weeks and reached a primetime viewer share of one third of all Danes watching television, received the second highest viewer rating in the history of the TV-channel TV2 (Denmark’s largest at the time), with the first episode nominated for a Golden Rose in Montreux. From 1996 to 2010 he was heading the Nordic Branch of The GoodWork Project led by professors Howard Gardner, Harvard University, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University and William Damon, Stanford University with comprehensive in-depth interviewing regarding excellence, engagement, and ethics, as understood by Nordic educators, leaders, journalists, and politicians, including a Prime Minister and three other ministers.
He has authored and co-authored more than 200 publications including the national bestseller “Positive Psychology” staying on the Danish top 10 list of non-fiction books for more than a year, and three anthologies on positive psychology, with contributions from peers Barbara Fredrickson, Martin Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Daniel Kahneman, Steven Pinker, Timothy Wilson, Daniel Gilbert, Barry Schwartz, Howard Gardner, Ryan Niemiec, William Damon, Antonella Delle Fave, Carmelo Vazquez, and other key people from the positive psychology field.
Hans Henrik Knoop has delivered more than thousand invited keynotes and lectures in Denmark and at conferences in Australia, Austria, Croatia, China, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Slovakia, Spain, The Philippines, the U.K. and the U.S, and is a frequent commentator in newspapers, radio and television on matters of learning, creativity, ethics, and positive psychology.
Contact: Phone: +45 20 95 49 60, Email: knoop@edu.au.dk
Website: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/persons/hans-henrik-knoop(309c5cfb-5430-4dc1-aa41-
5c80651b924b).html