I am currently an assistant professor at the Clinical Psychology section at Erasmus University Rotterdam. My research focuses on the different learning processes in anxiety-related psychopathology in humans. I am particularly interested in the acquisition and generalization of fear and avoidance to novel cues or situations, the reduction of pathological fear and avoidance, and the role of predisposing risk factors in the generalization and reduction of fear and avoidance.

In 2015, I started my PhD project supervised by Peter Lovibond at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. At the time evidence was emerging that excessive fear generalization serves as a pathological feature in clinical anxiety. It was, however, unclear whether overgeneralization of fear is a vulnerability factor for the development of pathological anxiety, or a sequelae of clinical anxiety. To unravel these potential explanations, my PhD work examined whether healthy individuals at risk of developing clinical anxiety exhibit excessive fear generalization. We found that trait anxious individuals show excessive fear generalization, but only under the condition of high threat ambiguity. Thus, my PhD work suggests that excessive fear generalization serves as a vulnerability factor for developing clinical anxiety.

In 2018, I started working as a postdoc with Andre Pittig at the University of Würzburg, Germany. My postdoc work examined the generalization and reduction of pathological, costly safety behavior. My work also focused on developing a laboratory measure that more closely models pathological safety behavior in clinical anxiety. Over the period of my postdoc training, I have also developed interest in examining avoidance of learnt fear, that is, avoidance of the feared stimulus/situation per se.

In 2022, I joined the Clinical Psychology section at Erasmus University Rotterdam as a junior faculty member, under the guidance of Matthias Wieser. My current plans are to expand on the research interests I have developed over my research training.