My interest and expertise lie in the field of behavioral genetics, psychology and music and cultural engagement. My work addresses factors that influence mental health and musical expertise as well as the relationship between the two, with a focus on gene-environment interplay. By using genetically informative designs, I am able to strengthen causal inferences and adjust for familial confounding when studying risk and protective factors.

I obtained my PhD in 2018 at the Biological Psychology Department of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. I studied genetic and familial factors that influence the development and persistence of childhood psychopathology. During my final PhD year I spend 6 months at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. After obtaining my PhD, I continued research in the field of behavioral genetics as a post-doc at the Department of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Instititute in Stockholm. I turned to investigating the relationship between music engagement and mental health and gene-environmental interplay underlying musical expertise. Since 2022, I continued this line of work as an Assistant Professor at the Behavioral Genetics unit of Dr. Miriam Mosing at the Max Planck Institute for Emperical Aesthetics in Frankfurt in collaboration with Prof. Karin Verweij at Amsterdam UMC, location University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychiatry. Additionally, since obtaining my PhD, I have worked one day per week for Prof. Josh Tybur at the Social Psychology Department of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, conducting genetic analyses for a variety of research projects.