Marijn was appointed assistant professor at the department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University in 2016, and associate processor in 2025. She is a behavioral scientist, focusing on understanding human behavior and designing social change approaches for behavior change. My main domains of interest are sustainability and health. Key topics in my research and teaching are social identity and social influence, reactance and resistance, trust, motivation, policy advice making, and inter- and transdisciplinary working.. In her work, Marijn uses insights from social psychology, health psychology, health science, consumer science and communication science.
Marijn coordinates and leads teaching (e.g. master program, honours program) and contributes to teaching in courses on both the bachelor and master levels. She also supervises students' internships and theses.
Marijn obtained her PhD in health psychology in 2014. Her dissertation on the influence of social norms on young people’s eating behavior received the 2015 Herman Schaalma award from the European Health Psychology Society. During her years as a PhD candidate, Marijn helped manage the EU-funded TEMPEST project (see here). Upon receiving her PhD, Marijn moved to the University of Konstanz as a postdoctoral researcher. She was responsible for the management and coordination of 80 partners within one work package of DEDIPAC, a large-scale interdisciplinary and international research project and knowledge hub (see here). One main output of this work package is an interactive, dynamic framework of the determinants of diet framework (DONE framework; see here). Marijn simultaneously continued her experimental research on social influence, reactance, and health behavior, also supervising a PhD project on this topic.
Since 2021, Marijn also works for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in various positions. She is currently programme leader of SocioVax,