I am an Associate Professor in Behavioural Data Science at the
Department of Methodology and Statistics at Tilburg University (The
Netherlands) and the Department of Security and Crime Science at
University College London (UK).
Previously I held a position at the UCL Dawes Centre for Future Crime
and obtained my PhD from the Department of Psychology at the University
of Amsterdam.
My research revolves around the interplay and advancement of
psychological research and computational methods to study human
behaviour. With my lab, I seek to answer two
questions:
How can computational methods enhance our understanding of the
human mind and behaviour?
How can psychological research methods inform our understanding
of computational model behaviour?
Substantive research interests include deception detection, human
resilience, and machine behaviour. Methodological interests examine the
nexus between textual data and psychological processes. My research
employs methods from experimental psychological research, Natural
Language Processing, (adversarial) machine learning and statistical
modelling. I am an active contributor to the open science community.
You can find an overview of papers on Google
Scholar and some additional outputs
here. Sometimes media outlets cover our
work.
I am teaching in various programmes.
Most of the course materials are available online.
Common questions
- Is it possible to do a PhD with you? Yes. There are various
routes for PhD projects (e.g., a funded position via university
employment, a joint PhD with another university, self-funding). All
positions that are connected to employment (typically for 4 years) are
publicly advertised. If you are keen to explore options, please have a
look at our lab and my research areas. The PhD project should be aligned
with the overall focus on computational methods to study human behaviour
and psychology.
- How can I join the research lab? The lab members are PhD
students, thesis students or research interns/assistants. If you are
looking for a thesis project, see below. For PhD opportunities, see
above. If you are interested in a research internship, please identify a
topic you are interested in that aligns with the lab’s focus and is
relevant to me and at least one other lab member. Reach out to me via
email then. Research internships should last at least 6 months.
- Do you offer projects for a bachelor theses? Projects for
BSc projects are advertised in the relevant BSc programmes and solely
work through that route.
- Can I do my MSc thesis in your lab? Yes - if your interests
align with the focus of the lab. Please identify a relevant question you
want to work on and contact me. The positions in the lab are limited to
ensure close supervision.
- Would you write a letter of recommendation for me? If you
are student and need a letter of recommendation for a masters programme
(or other programmes), I am happy to write that letter for you if I
know you. The best way for me to write a letter of reference is if
you have spent some time in our lab.