Our team
Academic staff
- Reine studies how people protect and maintain valuable relationships in times of conflict or stress. Her three main research lines are: 1) forgiveness in work and parent-child relationships, 2) children’s adjustment to parental divorce, and 3) chronically ill children’s relationships with their parents.
- Esther studies close relationships and divorce with the aim to better understand how relationships between (ex-)partners work and affect well-being. Her work covers topics like (COVID-19) stress, autonomy and relatedness, transition to parenthood, work-family balance, high-conflict divorce, forgiveness, and relationship interventions. She translates this knowledge to practice through lectures for professionals, media coverage, and board memberships.
- Leslie considers all things about social relations fascinating. She is particularly interested in the early dating stages of relationships, the self within relationships, as well as the topics of love and sex.
- Tom is fascinated by the uncanny human ability to work, learn and create together. He is particularly interested in the role of the body and embodied processes in collaborative endeavors such as learning, communication, teamwork and leadership. Tom studies the role of nonverbal synchrony in establishing connections between and among people and increasing our willingness and ability to work together.
- Melissa is intrigued by how societal norms and expectations shape the experiences of romantic couples. In doing so, she investigates why gender stereotypes about heterosexual relationships may cause difficulties for couples who break with traditional role divisions. Furthermore, by working together with societal stakeholders, she also tries to find ways how the context can be shaped through effective policy management.
- Lisanne is interested in how people can best regulate their own and others’ emotions to foster wellbeing and healthy social relationships. Throughout her work, she tries to understand when and why people are (un)successful in regulating their negative emotions. Moreover, she studies how people seek support or try to regulate others’ emotions in all kinds of relationships, such as romantic partners, friends and strangers.
- Lianne Aarntzen's research delves into gender stereotypes and parenthood, aiming to uncover how societal context and social identity shape parents' work-family decisions. Her work is centered on three core areas: 1) exploring the impact of social norms on parents' work-family guilt and work-family choices 2) exploring the impact of social norms of on developing feelings of parental competence, and 3) developing interventions to support families in making optimal work-family decisions, unconstrained by gender norm. Collaborating closely with stakeholders like midwives and HR practitioners, Lianne co-creates research that seeks to empower parents to navigate work and family life more effectively.
- Gonneke is part of the NWA project Economic Resilience of Women in the Netherlands (Economische Veerkracht Nederlandse Vrouwen) and is contributing to a survey study on the motivations, abilities, and opportunities of women without income in the Netherlands. She is mostly interested in understanding the interpersonal, social and societal forces individuals face in contexts of change and how people around you influence your opinions and behaviour. Her academic interests are characterized by a passion for exploring societal topics and applying diverse methods to build on theory and generate new hypotheses.
Relationships lab alumni
Email: h.t.vansteenis@uu.nl
As part of her research master’s in social and health psychology, Hannah joined the relationships lab and wrote her thesis on associations between problematic social media use, friend support and quality of life in chronically ill adolescents.
Email: d.l.krane@uu.nl
Lea wrote her research master’s thesis in the relationship’s lab. Specifically, she investigated whether implicit partner evaluations of dominance and weakness account for negative relationship outcomes that heterosexual dual earner couples experience.
Email: l.a.bawah@uu.nl
For her research master’s thesis, Laveh joined the relationships lab and investigated why individuals apologises and how that influences acceptance rates.
Wenrui is from Zhangjiakou, a city in northwestern Hebei province in northeastern China. Not far away from her hometown, Wenrui completed her bachelor and master in Tianjin, majoring in organizational behaviors and human resources management. During her master, she developed a great interest in positive psychology and understanding how people could efficiently deal with negative behaviours at work. With funding from the China Scholarship Council (CSC), Wenrui came to the Netherlands in 2018 to pursue a PhD’s degree in Social, Health and Organisational Psychology at Utrecht University. Her PhD project focused on Forgiveness in Working Relationships.
During her time as a graduate student in Experimental Psychology at Ghent University, Charlotte completed a research internship in the relationships lab under supervision of Reine van der Wal. After completion of the internship, she pursued a second master in Clinical Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Charlotte's interests are very diverse but the research and practical field of children with divorced parents inspires her greatly.