Vera Bouwman is a postdoctoral researcher and teacher at the department of Clinical Psychology. Her research focusses on the dynamics of anxiety-related underlying processes within individuals to understand change in anxiety. For this, she draws inspiration from the Dynamic Systems Theory and uses intensive longitudinal data (ecological momentary assessment, EMA).

She obtained her doctorate at the department of Clinical Psychology on 10 October 2025. Her PhD research focused on implementing experimental approaches to predict anxiety-related treatment response. Based on dynamical system models, dynamic early warning signals can be identified to indicate individual readiness for change. The aim is to understand why and when change is most likely and translate this to clinical practice. This project was funded by a NWO VIDI grant awarded to dr. Elske Salemink ‘Time for change. Sensitivity to experimental perturbations as a predictor of anxiety improvement in treatment’. Vera Bouwman was supervised by prof. dr. Elske Salemink, prof. dr. Iris Engelhard, and dr. Lynn Mobach. Vera obtained her Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology (2016) and Research Master’s degree in Social and Health Psychology cum laude (2018) at Utrecht University. Hereafter, Vera worked as a research assistant (2018-2019) in the Experimental Psychopathology lab (UU) and her work was part of a NWO VICI grant awarded to prof. dr. Iris Engelhard.