About me

History

My previous experience includes a 5.5 year post-doctoral fellowship at Ghent University, at the faculty of Economics and Business Administration (funded by FWO – Research Foundation Flanders – personal funding), where I was a member of the Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management. My academic career track has been multi-disciplinary: I graduated with an MsC in Industrial and Organisational Psychology from the KULeuven (Belgium) and went on to work as a junior researcher at Vlerick Business School (Belgium) in the “People & Organisation’” department for three years. I applied for a personal doctoral grant to pursue my dream of becoming a PhD holder, and achieved top marks and a subsequent fully funded three year scholarship from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO Vlaanderen, Belgium). My PhD was in the field of Applied Economics (Ghent University, Belgium). More specifically, I focussed on the role of judgment in forecasting time series with special events such as promotions. During my PhD I was very fortunate to be able to spend a year as Visiting Research Fellow at University College,London (UK) in the Faculty of Brain Sciences, with noted author Prof. Dr. Nigel Harvey.After my PhD, I briefly returned to Vlerick Business School to run the Vlerick Forecasting Centre for a year. After this, I applied for a post-doctoral fellowship at FWO Vlaanderen, which I obtained as a junior (three years) and a subsequent position as a senior (2.5 years). As of 2023, I am an assistant professor at Open University (NL) and visiting professor at KULeuven (BE), where I have moved again towards my psychology background. 

 

 

Research

My work is cross-disciplinary, bringing together teachings on decision-making, behaviour and attitudes towards algorithms, with applications in work psychology, operations management, and project management. My research focuses on the role of judgment in forecasting, cognitive biases, the effect of forecast advice and trust on forecasting performance and the interaction of man and machine in forecasting. My latest work focusses on attitudes towards algorithms and how it connects to behaviour such as using algorithmic forecasts or manually adjusting them.

  

For my research, I code online behavioural experiments. You can usually find one up and running at www.judgmentalforecasting.com. 

I hope I can convey my passion for research via this website. If you are interested in my research or have an interesting idea for cooperation, use the contact form or simply send an email to shari.debaets@ou.nl.

Teaching

I have a passion for teaching, coaching and course development. In my position as Visiting Professor at the KULeuven (Belgium), I teach the course “Organisational Decision Making and Change’” to a wonderfully diverse group of international BsC and MsC students. At the Open University of the Netherlands, I have spent three years mentoring MsC thesis students from the Faculty of Management, as an additional activity next to my post-doctoral position. As of January 1st, I am full-time employed at the OU at the faculty of Psychology, where I continue my passion of guiding people who are new to research in their exploration of the field. I thoroughly enjoy spending a part of my time focussed on coaching people in academic skills such as public speaking and presentation skills, with a focus on working on confidence, teaching non-native speakers the ins and outs of the English language and different writing styles such as Academic Writing. For low to middle countries, I am happy to do this for free as a service to the global community. Additionally, the esteemed professor Bahman Rostami-Tabar has invited me to join the “Democratizing Forecasting” initiative as a teacher, to spread forecasting knowledge to developing countries. 

 

 

I hope to hear from you all!

Memberships

 

I am a long-time member of:

 

The International Institute of Forecasters

The Society for Judgment and Decision Making

The Harvey lab (University College London, UK)

The Northumbria Decisions and Analytics Research Interest Group

The Institute for Neuro & Behavioural Project Management

 

I am the proud former president of the Early Career Forecaster’s network of the International Institute of Forecasting: 

 

The ECR team of the IIF invites all interested young career researchers to join for events organized during the annual International Symposium on Forecasting and during the year! We hold content sessions (e.g., on life after your PhD) with both practitioners and academics, have informal get-togethers, organize webinars and relate all your concerns and questions to the IIF.

 

Additionally, I enjoyed my time as a co-host with Mahdi Abolghasemi of the IIF’s podcast “Forecast Impact“. Every month we interviewed a prominent practitioner or academic in the field of forecasting and invite them to talk about their career, their daily life and their experiences. A true joy to experience!

 

Additionally, I am the President of European Operations and Chief Forecasting Scientist of the Institute for Neuro & Behavioural Project Management. This is a large scale project in cooperation with Josh Ramirez. The Institute has developed a course (Neuralplan) on project management that focuses on the behavioral aspects of project management. It is unique in its approach, as it is based on research and combines behavior literature with project management literature. The course comes with the NPPQ certification, so make sure to check it out!

 

I have had a seat as researcher representative at the Strategy and Organisation commission, and Scientific Research commission at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Ghent University, and was faculty representative at the Post-Doc Community board of Ghent University.

 

I am the column editor for the ‘Judgment’ section in Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting.