Truus Ophuysen

Senior Advisor ELIA

Truus Ophuysen is an experienced all-round adviser and expert in the field of education and culture in a European frame with considerable intercultural experience. She developed successful projects, evaluated project proposals on behalf of the European Commission in different fields and is directly involved in policy developments and policy influencing  in the field of culture and education on a European level.

She was for nine years deputy director of the European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA) and successfully developed and managed large European projects in the field of higher arts education in particular on the implications of the Bologna process for higher arts education institutes, mobility and employability of young artists, gender equality.  She also was a longstanding member of the executive committee of Culture Action Europe, an umbrella network in arts and culture.

Currently she works as a senior adviser for the ELIA Board on EU policies, European funding and new developments in higher arts education. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of the European Civil Society Platform Access to Culture and represents the European art schools in the large European Commission ESCO project,,  developing a European multilingual classification of occupations  and qualifications.

Previously, she was a programme manager for the European Commission in the Fourth Action Programme for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men and worked as a European project adviser. She is the author of a book ‘Vrouwen en Europa’ on women and employment, income and policy in Europe. She holds a degree in social and educational sciences and previously held different teaching and management positions in vocational training institutions in the Netherlands.