Theun Pieter van Tienoven joined the Research Group TOR of of the Sociology Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in February 2008 after obtaining a master degree in Leisure Studies and a minor degree in Organisational Studies at the Tilburg University (The Netherlands). Central to his main research (funded by Flanders Research Foundation) is revealing and studying the temporal structures of contemporary society that shape daily life . Within this main research theme his main interests entail daily routines in human behaviour, social rhythms and mental health, the sociology of sleep, gender inequality, and leisure.
His teaching includes guest lectures on gender inequality, on inequality in leisure-time and leisure consumption, and on the sociology of time as well as a course on Leisure & Policy.
Other ongoing projects in which he is involved are a HERCULES funded infrastructure for continuous modular online time use surveys (MOTUS), a Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks (BRAIN) for the comparison of three methods inquiring working time estimates, and a subproject in a European Social Research Council (ESRC) project managed by the Center for Time Use Research (CTUR) at Oxford University (UK) to make a cross national comparison of working times using the weekly work grid registration method.