ZHIA Jaarevent

On Friday, 23 January 2026, the ZHIA-jaarevent will take place at Hogeschool Leiden. Together with researchers and practice partners, you will work through serious gaming on new impact projects around sustainability, healthcare, and AI in the region.

What will we do?

We will open the day with exciting ZHIA news. Our keynote speaker, Femke Brenninkmeijer, Chair of the Economic Board Zuid-Holland, will take us through the urgent societal challenges in the region and call on us (universities of applied sciences and partners) to come up with solutions.

Next, we will work on the regional challenges from the Growth Agenda of the Province of Zuid-Holland and jointly design solutions. Using serious gaming, we will create new connections and design impact projects and propositions around our themes: sustainability, health, care and wellbeing, and AI and data science. Researchers, practice partners, and other key regional stakeholders will join the table. From these different perspectives, we will develop new collaborations. Serious gaming provides opportunities to discuss societal issues in an accessible, interactive way. We will do this using a game tailored to these societal challenges, developed by Professor Ivo Vrouwe and his research group. Ivo is Professor of Teacher Professionalization and Blended Education at Hogeschool Rotterdam.

We are very pleased that Meindert Stolk, Deputy for Economy for the Province of Zuid-Holland, will close our event.

Why participate?

During the annual event, we bring together the knowledge, experience, and creativity present in the room. Research, learning, and innovation are central, with and for the region. In an inspiring, interactive setting, we work together on ideas that do not just stay on paper, but are actually further developed.

You will experience how collaboration between education, research, and practice directly leads to new insights, propositions, and impact projects. This creates a shared learning and discovery space where ideas can grow immediately and in the long term. Your contribution makes a difference: what you develop at the event forms the basis for concrete results and sustainable impact.

As a knowledge partner, researcher, or representative from the field, the ZHIA-jaarevent gives you access to a strong network of four universities of applied sciences and their practice partners. You benefit from the regional scale, the diversity of disciplines, and the opportunity to jointly develop solutions that go beyond your own domain.

Please note that there is a maximum capacity for the event and you may be placed on a waiting list. Register quickly if you want to secure your participation.