Joop de Jong is Associate Professor in Arts and Heritage at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University. His research focuses on cultural policy, cultural participation and cultural heritage. He is co-founder of the Master in European Public Affairs, in conjunction with the European Institute for Public Administration in Maastricht, and founder of the Master in Arts and Heritage: Policy, Management and Education. He also belongs to the faculty of The Executive Master in Cultural Leadership (EMCL), offered in partnership by Maastricht University and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. At Maastricht University he served positions as Director of the Bachelor in Arts and Culture, Vice Dean for Education and Internationalisation, and chair of the Department of History.

He has previously worked for the universities of Utrecht, Leiden and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and was Academic Director of the Maastricht program of Macalester College, St. Paul (USA),) and Extern Examiner at the School  of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin (Ireland).

Joop de Jong is one of the founders of the Maastricht Centre of Art and Culture, Conservation and Heritage (MACCH). He was Chair of the jury awarding prizes for cultural entrepreneurship of the Province of Limburg.  He is often asked as consultant for practitioners and policy-makers, involving many commissioned research projects. Recently he was one of the principal authors of a research project on the profession and position of self-employed artists in the Netherlands, in relation to causes of their economic vulnerability, and with regard to the social value they create (https://www.lkca.nl/publicatie/kunstenaars-stoppen-niet/). He is member of a number of (supervisory) boards of cultural and heritage organisations, and of the Council of Europa Nostra.

He holds a MA and PhD in History from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.