Dr. Moniek Hover is Professor in Storytelling at NHTV University for Higher Education (Breda, the Netherlands), where she teaches in the applied and the academic bachelor and master programs in the field of leisure and tourism. At NHTV she leads the research program line of storytelling, leisure experience and consumer behavior.
Moniek received her Ph.D in 2013 for an embedded case study of “The Efteling as a ‘Narrator’ of Fairy Tales”. Theme park the Efteling opened its world famous Fairy Tale Forest in 1952, and is currently the third largest theme park in Europe and by far the most popular attraction in the Netherlands hosting 4.2 million visitors a year. Since 2009, together with the Creative Director of the Efteling, she leads the Efteling Academy, a unique talent development program for students in the field of storytelling, brand development and performance. With multidisciplinary NHTV teams, she provides storytelling-based consulting projects in the field of leisure and tourism. Her projects involve experience concepts and events related to the international Van Gogh year in 2015 and to the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the painter Jheronimus Bosch’s death in 2016.
Lecture on Storytelling and Experience
In her presentation, Dr. Hover will go into storytelling (as a human phenomenon) and the role it plays in bringing about meaningful (leisure) experiences. Outcomes of research into the experience of visitors of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in relation to the various applications of (implicit and explicit) storytelling will be presented.
The presentation will be practical rather than academic and will feature real-life examples rather than theory.
