Is personality shaped by environmental factors such as stress and trauma? Or do young people create their own environment based on who they are? And what is the influence of person-characteristics and environmental factors on the mental health of young people? These questions reflect the core of the research I work on as an associate professor at the department of Developmental Psychology. In doing so, I hardly ever work alone. Collaboration and making connections is the driving force behind everything I do. For example, for my clinical research I am affiliated at specialized youth mental health care institutes, also closely collaborate with GGD and schools, and aim to connect with the broader audience and youth specifically.
For the Thriving and Healthy Youth community, I aim to build on these connections to promote multidisciplinary research and teaching aimed at identifying youth at risk, understand development and promote youth (psychological) adjustment. Read more

I am associate professor in Behavioural Neuroscience, with a long-standing interest in the individual variation in susceptibility to mental health problems, that often arise at young age. In my lab we for example study the relation between social play at early age and the development of addictive behavior later in life. As one of the coordinators of the chairs of the hub Healthy Play Better Coping, I am involved in multiple interdisciplinary projects, all centered around play research in animals and humans. For the Thriving and Healthy Youth community, my ambition is to foster interdisciplinary collaborations across faculties, with societal partners and involving early-career scientists. We need to gain more knowledge about the development of the social, emotional, communication and cognitive skills that children need to prosper and develop opportunities for vulnerable groups of children (impacted by poverty, disease, neglect, divorce, trauma, migration or loss) to thrive. Read more

I am a pediatrician specialized in Social Pediatrics and associate professor in Child Health, with a special interest in concepts of health and resilience. As a clinician-scientist, I am firmly embedded in both academia and hospital. With the appointment as DoY chair, there will be a better opportunity to promote and facilitate interdisciplinary research to better understand individual differences in psychosocial/mental health outcomes, identify the persistent stressors and protective variables associated with these (individual or group) outcomes, compare parameters between children with chronic conditions and their healthy peers, raise awareness of what it means to live with a disease or other vulnerabilities and what the long-term consequences are, and develop (preventive) interventions to promote and sustain healthy development. For the Thriving and Healthy Youth community, my ambition is to foster interdisciplinary collaborations across faculties, with societal partners and with early-career scientists. We want to encourage the use of FAIR data and Open Science, for example by collaborating with various initiatives that already exist across faculties and by giving (young) researchers more access to these initiatives. Read more

I am a developmental psychologist and focus mostly on emotions and well-being in children and adolescents. My research centers on exploring how young people learn to differentiate between various emotions and the role of physical sensations in emotions. This is particularly relevant during puberty, when adolescents undergo many physical changes, but also in young people with medically unexplained physical symptoms. Read more