I received my bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2017 from Radboud University Nijmegen. During my bachelor’s, I developed my interest in social neuroscience, especially how digital advancements can solve mental health problems. I further translated this interest by starting a research master in cognitive neuroscience at Leiden University. For my master thesis at the CoPAN lab of Dr. Mariska Kret, I investigated whether metacognitive beliefs or emotion recognition skills sustain social anxiety symptoms. I obtained my master’s degree in 2020 with a KHMW Jan Brouwer thesis award for the best thesis in behavioral sciences.
In 2022, together with Prof. Dr. Mariska Kret and Dr. Milica Nikolic, I was awarded the NWO Mosaic grant 2.0 to fund my PhD project titled “Mind the Body: Investigating and targeting cognitive and affective mechanisms in youth social anxiety”. I will examine how manipulating metacognitive (cognition) and heart-rate variability (emotion) disturbances influence social anxiety symptoms and how targeting these disturbances with fitting digital interventions can help reduce social anxiety symptoms in adolescence. We will combine cognitive, behavioral, and physiological measures to take the first steps in implementing digital interventions to help socially anxious youth. The knowledge we gain from this project will help increase the understanding of the development of social anxiety and implement appropriate interventions to help socially anxious adolescents cope with their symptoms in a minimally demanding and easily accessible format.
