I am a PhD candidate in Political Psychology and Political Communication at the University of Amsterdam. In my dissertation, I research emotion regulation in political contexts and the relationship between societal threats and politics. Specifically, I study how citizens deal with the emotions that politics elicits, and what this means for their political attitudes, behavior, and well-being. I also investigate the extent to which citizens feel threatened by socio-political issues such as climate change, polarization, and immigration, and how these threat perceptions relate to political ideology.
My work is driven by an interest in the psychological underpinnings and consequences of political attitudes and behavior: Why do we feel, think, and behave the way we do when it comes to politics? And how does politics, in turn, shape our feelings, thoughts, and behavior? I use a mix of surveys, experiments, content analysis, and qualitative approaches to address these questions.
I am part of the NWO-funded VIDI project “Under Pressure”. Before joining the University of Amsterdam, I studied at Leiden University (M.Sc. Research in Social and Economic Psychology), Freie Universität Berlin, and KU Leuven.
