about me

[Für deutschsprachige Informationen steht mein CV zum Download zu Verfügung.]

Lars Balzer, Prof. Dr. phil., Dipl.-Psych., is head of the Evaluation Unit at the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training SFUVET in Zollikofen / Switzerland, where he and his team are responsible for the topic evaluation in research, teaching and internal and external project work.

Studied psychology at the University of Koblenz-Landau / Germany, graduated in 1998. Then research assistant at the Centre for Educational Research (ZepF) at the University of Koblenz-Landau, with a doctorate in psychology with a thesis on the evaluation process in 2005, awarded as university’s best dissertation in that year. Since 2005 at the SFUVET (formerly Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training SFIVET and Swiss Pedagogical Institute for Vocational Education SIBP). 2011 Acquisition of the SVEB-1 certificate of the Swiss Federation for Adult Learning. 2014-2016 Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg / South Africa. Since 2017 Professor at SFUVET.

He has more than 25 years of teaching experience, first as a free-lance IT trainer, later with teaching assignments at various academic and other institutions (including the universities of Bern / Switzerland, Koblenz-Landau / Germany, Giessen / Germany, Luxembourg / Luxembourg and Johannesburg / South Africa, as well as the Cambodia Development Resource Institute in Phnom Penh / Cambodia) in the fields of “evaluation”, “diagnostics”, “social science research methods” and “statistics”.

His projects, research and publications include, among others, the evaluation of reform and innovation projects especially in vocational education and training, consultancy in evaluation projects, or the analysis of conditions for successful evaluation projects.