Dr Dorine van Norren has a PhD in Law and Development Studies from Tilburg University and is currently the Strategic Advisor, North and South America and the Carribbean at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a Diplomat, she had served as the Coordinator for UNESCO and SDGs and human rights under the ministry of education, culture and science. She also lived and worked in Sri Lanka and Turkey. Dr van Norren is also an Associate Researcher at the Van Vollenhoven Institute in Leiden where she focuses of issues relating to law and development, and her educational journey outside the Netherlands took her to France and South Africa. Her doctoral dissertation on Sustainable Development Goals and non- Western concepts of Wellbeing: Ubuntu (South Africa), Happiness (Bhutan), Buen Vivir (Ecuador) remains a seminal multicultural research that centralizes the importance of infusing cultural values and spirituality to the global development agenda in the 21st Century. She is a visual artist, blogger and public commentator with articles in OneWorld, The Broker, Atlantisch Perspectief, NRC, Trouw, and De Helling, and has also published scientific articles on development cooperation.
