About me

I currently work as a Senior Lecturer and Researcher Strategic Communication at NHL Stenden University of Applies Sciences.

I completed a PhD in Social and Organizational Psychology in 2015. As part of my dissertation, I developed and validated the Perceived Group Inclusion Scale (PGIS), which measures the degree to which people perceive to be socially included in groups. To date, the PGIS is one of the most frequently used tools to measure social inclusion.

Soon after my PhD defense, I accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Utrecht University to work with some of the top scholars in my field.

Together with my colleagues, I developed and launched the Netherlands Inclusivity Monitor (NIM). Building a bridge between diversity science and practice, the NIM aims to (1) diagnose the effectiveness of an organization’s diversity and inclusion policies, (2) compare the organization’s score with a benchmark score derived from other participating organizations, and (3) provide concrete and evidence-based suggestions for improvement.

Besides having a real impact on work organizations, the NIM  yields a large amount of high quality data. Hence, I was fortunate to be able to secure grants from Instituut Gak and the Goldschmeding Foundation. These grants are used (1) to translate the collected data into practical and scientific output and (2) to further expand the number of organizations participating in the NIM.

Complementing this applied work, my fundamental research line focuses on the origins and consequences of social inclusion. I investigate how perceptions of social inclusion come about, unfold over time, and relate to individual (e.g., well-being and performance) and group outcomes (e.g., level of conflict and decision quality). In doing so, I adopt a mixed-methods approach, by conducting both experimental and field studies and by triangulating data from multiple sources.