Sophie Op de Beeck is Research Manager at the Centre of Excellence on ‘Trust and Distrust in Multi-level Governance’ – GOVTRUST. GOVTRUST is one of the 13 Centres of Excellence (COE), supported by the University of Antwerp as part of its “Excellence in Research” strategy, and performs cutting-edge and cross-disciplinary research at international frontier domains. As a research manager, she is responsible for facilitating and stimulating indersciplinary research collaboration between the members of the COE GOVTRUST.

Sophie holds a Master in Public Management and Policy (2009; KU Leuven) and a Master in Business Administration (2008; KU Leuven Association). In 2016, she obtained her PhD in Social Sciences (KU Leuven), with a thesis titled "HRM responsibilities in the public sector: The role of line managers". During her nine-year career as a researcher (2009-2018), she was involved in different fundamental and practice/policy-oriented research projects at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute, focusing on (the organisation of) HRM in the public sector. In 2017-2018, she also took on the doctoral coordination of the Policy Research Centre Governance Innovation (research program funded by the Flemish government). Continuing her career as a research advisor for the Humanities and Social Sciences Group at KU Leuven (2018-2020), she helped researchers from various disciplines to find and obtain the research funding best suited to their needs. In 2020, she joined the University of Antwerp as GOVTRUST research manager.