About me

Since September 2020, I’m an assistant professor in the Department of Social, Health & Organisational Psychology at Utrecht University as part of the focus area of Human-centered AI.

From 2017 to 2020 I was a postdoc in the Social Brain in Action Laboratory within the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Scotland. My research was advised by Professor Emily Cross and part of the Social Robots project in which we studied how humans perceive and interact with robots (go #teamSoBots!).

Prior to that I was a postdoc in the Brain and Emotion Laboratory, Maastricht University, The Netherlands and the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (2015-2016).

Between 2011 and 2015, I completed my PhD under the supervision of Professor Beatrice de Gelder at Tilburg University. In 2016, I successfully defended my dissertation entitled “Sympathy for the Devil - On the Neural Mechanisms of Threat and Distress Reactivity”. You can find a digital copy here. If you want to receive a physical copy, please contact me. Please check the media page for press coverage.

Before obtaining my MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience (2011), I received a BSc in Psychology (2008) and Social Work (2005). During my MSc I worked with dr. Dennis Schutter (Utrecht University) on the combination of electroencephalography and non-invasive brain stimulation in the study of neurophysiological and emotional processes. In 2010, I was a visiting graduate student in the Social Emotive Neuroscience lab of Professor Eddie Harmon-Jones (Texas A&M University, USA), and used non-invasive brain stimulation to investigate the role of the frontal cortex in aggression.

Please find my CV here.

The cover illustration of my PhD dissertation is made by the amazing Ronald Huiskes, check out his other work.