Moniek Hover

Dr. Moniek Hover is Professor of Storytelling at Breda University of Applied Sciences (the Netherlands), where she teaches in the field of leisure and tourism. Moniek received her PhD degree from Tilburg University in 2013 for the intrinsic case study of “The Efteling as a ‘Narrator‘ of Fairy Tales”. Efteling (founded in 1952) is the third largest theme park in Europe and part of the Dutch cultural heritage. She does research into the connections between storytelling and experiences (emotions, memories and meaning) in the contexts of leisure, tourism and cultural heritage sites. She delivers presentations at academic and industry conferences, and she publishes in academic and industry journals.

With interdisciplinary BUas teams, Moniek provides (storytelling-based) research and design projects in the field of leisure and tourism. This entails story-based concepts and storylines, e.g. for (the redesign of) Van Gogh locations in Brabant (the Netherlands), for Markiezenhof museum, for Hanseatic Cities Marketing, for Groote Heide Nature Park, for Libema Zoos, for World War II heritage sites, and for Zuiderwaterlinie (Southern Waterline). In line with this she also develops brand guides, books, scripts (for AR-videos), dialogues, scenarios, and transmedia storytelling approaches.

Moniek and her team are currently involved in the development (with VisitBrabant) of cycling routes enriched with storytelling, based on e.g. legends and folktales, and on industrial heritage. Another high-profile project is the creation of a mobile booth in which visitors can have interactive dialogues with characters from the past.