Biography

Again, welcome to my website! The word biography sounds a little bit heavy, but this is the only page I want to use to share some personal information.

I am Ronald-Jan (my full name is: Ronald-Jan de Bruin), born 18 March 1987 in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. I partially grew up outside the Netherlands, because my parents worked abroad for some time. Therefore I lived in the United Kingdom for three months (London), one year in France (Massy, Paris) and almost five years in Guinea (West Africa) .. Because of this special experience, I am still interested in different cultures and in the African continent in particular. Back in the Netherlands I went to year 8 of the same primary school, where I started in year 1 once.

In 2005 I got my high school diploma with the direction Economy & Society. Initially I started the study Information Management at Tilburg University, but I soon discovered that this was not the right study for me. I then switched to the Christian University in Ede (CHE) where I started to study Communications. The practical approach of the applied university attracted me. In Ede I discovered that the multidisciplinary, but relatively new discipline communication is very interesting. During my study at the CHE, I came in touch with many aspects of communication. The formulation of communication, preparing advisory reports, but also graphic design and copy writing. The study has shown me that communication has developed in different directions, depending on the sector which you work in. Communications isn't professionalized everywhere. Public communication is essentially different from communication in the nonprofit and commercial sectors. Through internships at the communications department of Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) the public relations department of the political party Christian Union, I experienced this in real life.

Because I wanted to add more depth to my study, I started in 2009 with the premaster in Communication Studies at the Free University in Amsterdam. In my pre-master thesis, I investigated the donation intention for charities through SMS Marketing. Now I'm working on my master's thesis on ‘Tweeting politicians‘ and I hope in the summer of 2012 to graduate.