On September 14th 2023, Ewa defended her PhD thesis “Traces of Violent Video Gameplay in Adolescent Development” at the Department of Communication Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In her PhD project, Ewa investigated the possible effects of violent video games on adolescents' social and cognitive skills: emotion recognition, perspective-taking, inhibitory control, and empathy for pain. She tested individually over 500 adolescent boys using behavioral and neuroimaging (ERP) approaches. Her PhD project was funded by a Research Talent Grant (NWO). More information here.
In March 2022, Ewa started as a postdoctoral researcher in the Youth and Digitalisation (JEDi) consortium project (PI: prof. Liesbeth Kester), at Utrecht University, Department of Education. In her postdoc project, Ewa focuses on inequalities in digital media use and its possible impact on social, cognitive, and identity development in children and adolescents.
More information about the JEDi project here, project's website (in NL): https://jedi.sites.uu.nl/
Between September 2022 - February 2023, Ewa was a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, Department of Education, in a Vici project of prof. Tamara van Gog. Ewa studied there the effectiveness of self-regulated learning training over time.
In 2021-2022, Ewa was a postdoc at the Department of Clinical, Neuro- and Developmental Psychology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In collaboration with the NeurolabNL education team, led by prof. Lydia Krabbendam, Ewa conducted a systematic literature review on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education (students' motivation and self-regulated learning).
Between 2013-2015, Ewa was a research assistant in Poland and the Netherlands in projects on the impact of violent video games on youth's social skills and gambling behavior among adults.
Between 2008 - 2013, she studied psychology the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS University) in Poland. During the last year of her studies (2012-2013), she received the Erasmus scholarship and studied psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In 2013, she graduated cum laude by defending her Master's thesis on a relationship between violent video game exposure and emotional information processing in adolescents and adults.
Projects
Project
Youth and Digitalisation (JEDi)
01.02.2023
to 15.04.2029
General project description
JEDi is an NWA project investigating the social, cognitive, and identity development of children and youth. The project includes seven work packages. Within four of those work packages, seven PhDs and one Postdoc conduct their research projects. Scientific partners and practice partners are united in the consortium.
Role
Researcher
Individual project description
Today’s children and youth (C&Y) are immersed in digital media in the full media landscape that surrounds them across contexts. The Covid pandemic revealed unequal opportunities for C&Y to use digital media. There are differences in digital media access, motivation/skills to use digital media, and support of key persons (e.g., parents/teachers/peers) herein. Understanding mechanisms in C&Y’s digital media use related to their development helps them and key persons to act in evidence-informed ways to reduce inequality. A better understanding of these factors is especially important during transition periods (i.e., from kindergarten to primary school or the early years in secondary school). During these periods, deviations in development could strongly impact C&Y’s opportunities. Our aim is that scientists, parents, professionals, and C&Y understand the mechanisms that influence the relations between C&Y's digital media use, their development, and opportunities. Furthermore, we want to develop skills and tools to support a positive impact of C&Y’s digital media use on development and equality of opportunities. This research project is innovative in taking the full cross-contextual media landscape into account, studying the impact of digital media use on the development and equality of opportunities in a longitudinal perspective, at cognitive, social, and identity levels, combining longitudinal studies with experimental and/or ESM studies for insight in real-time processes in the daily lives of adolescents, including the role of key persons, individual dispositions and background factors in development and, adopting a knowledge-chain-wide research approach that combines fundamental, applied and practice-oriented research resulting in tested interventions/tools for practice.
Funding
NWO grant The NWA program 'Youth and digitization - impact on identity development, relationships and equity'.
Project members UU