Dr. Monika Donker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education & Pedagogy (section Youth and Family) at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the emotional, behavioral, and physiological dynamics that unfold in everyday interactions between teachers and students, and between parents and adolescents. She investigates how these moment‑to‑moment interactions shape individuals’ emotions, autonomy, and well‑being, using a combination of self‑report, behavioral observation, and psychophysiological measures.

She completed her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Tamara van Gog and Prof. Dr. Tim Mainhard. Her doctoral work combined physiological indicators with systematic coding of teacher–student interactions to examine how teachers’ emotional processes influence classroom dynamics and both teacher and student outcomes. She subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the InTransition project with Prof. Dr. Susan Branje, where she studied how family relationships shape adolescents’ emotional functioning and adjustment, during challenging periods such as school transitions and the COVID‑19 pandemic.

In her teaching, Dr. Monika Donker contributes to several courses in the Bachelor Pedagogical Sciences, the (pre-)Master Orthopedagogics, and the Research Master Educational Sciences: Learning in Interaction (EdSci). She teaches courses on academic writing and communication skills and supervises both Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. In addition, she is actively involved in educational development through her role as test ambassador and as a developer of the F-ACT dashboard on academic writing competencies.