Alexander Minnaert finished his PhD at the University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1996 on a longitudinal study among freshmen on academic performance, cognition, metacognition, and motivation and has been assistant and associate professor at Leiden University, the Netherlands. In 2004, he became full professor in the domain of clinical educational research, student counselling, special needs education and educational research methodology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Further, he became a member of the Academy of Finland and was appointed as chair of the Academy of Finland (division Education) from 2014 till 2016.

Nowadays he is the research program leader of "Learning and education related problems" focusing on the context of (inclusive) education and (remedial) teaching, aiming at the development, implementation and evaluation of conditions conducive for learning and development at various levels of (pre-school) education. He is author of more than 100 international, peer-reviewed articles (among 10 systematic review studies) within the field of inclusive education, teaching and learning, (meta)cognition and self-regulation, special education needs, motivation, social-emotional processes, giftedness (2E), and assessment.