Same degree programme... different career

Same degree...

As a child I found an amazing stone right by our house. I was convinced it was a dinosaur bone and took it with me to Naturalis. Apparently it was ‘only’ a piece of flint but my interest in nature had already been sparked. When I was studying for my degree in biology, I gained an ever greater appreciation of how nature works and how everything in life is dependent on everything else. I still find it hard to believe how that unique interrelationship is maintained (most of the time at least)! I’ve worked a lot with apes, I’ve studied the behaviour of macaques, for example. This made me realise how similar we are to each other. I want people to be amazed by nature. Here at Naturalis I talk to visitors of all ages about this on a daily basis. As educational developer, I work on the content that I want to communicate to people. I love the variety. One day I can be telling people stories as science link and connecting science and the public, the next I might be working as a preparator in the dino lab telling people about dinosaurs. If, at the end of the day, a child comes up to me and says: I’m going to study insects in my garden, then I’ve achieved my objective.

...Different career

I chose biology because it’s about the whole of life, in the broadest sense. From the second year of my Bachelor’s degree I became increasingly interested in human behaviour and the brain. I enjoyed doing research but it was very remote from the ‘real world’. While I was studying for my degree I didn’t really have much idea about what I wanted to do in my career. For me, it was just about the learning itself. After I graduated, among other things, I did some research around youth support. Alzheimer Nederland already knew me from an internship I’d done and asked me to come and work for them. There I worked on giving people with dementia and their carers a say in the choice of which research was awarded a grant. People with dementia can still be involved in these kinds of decisions. You can ask them, for example, Do you think this is important? or Is that a problem that you can identify with?. Ten years ago involving the target group in research was a relatively new thing, nowadays it’s a condition for funding. Quite apart from this condition, I try to show researchers that involving the target group makes their research more enjoyable and more effective. Being able to connect science and practice in this way gives me a sense of satisfaction.

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