Team

I have the privilege to be involved in the supervision of 5 PhD students at the moment, as part of my grant to build a personalized early warning system for depression (WARN-D) funded by the European Research Council, and the New Science of Mental Disorder (NSMD) grant (PI Anita Jansen) funded by the Dutch Research Council.

Carlotta Rieble is a PhD student in the WARN-D project. She graduated from the Research Master’s program in psychology at the University of Amsterdam after studying psychology and sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Carlotta is interested in researching the person-specific dynamics of mental health and embracing the complexity of the biopsychosocial systems that give rise to mental health problems. You can find her Leiden University website here.

Ricarda Proppert is a PhD student in the WARN-D project. Having followed the combined Research Master in Clinical- and Health Psychology at Leiden University, she hopes to continue developing her skills as a science-practitioner. She’s fascinated by the intricate challenges psychology faces as a science: What most scientists may call random error variance, following a normal distribution with a mean of zero, might be the most insightful source of information to a clinician or and individual. In her research, she hopes to bridge that gap by studying how people’s experiences of depression are similar, as well as the extend to which they are unique. Ultimately, she hopes to find ways in which both sources of information can be utilized to inform our understanding of mental health.

Alberto Jover Martinez is a PhD student at the department of Clinical Psychological Science at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He graduated from the psychopathology specialization of the research master in cognitive and clinical neuroscience of Maastricht University. The main aim of Alberto’s PhD project is studying the dynamics of individual network structures of patients with different mental health problems. By doing that we hope to reach different goals: (1) improving the treatment of mental health problems, (2) shedding some light on how mental health problems are initiated and maintained, and (3) investigating what are the most common network structures, and how such structures are associated to the categories in the DSM. ​

Myrthe Veenman studied Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. She obtained the research master’s degree with the specialisation Psychological Methods and Statistics, and finished the master track Behavioural Data Science (2020). In September 2020, she started her PhD programme with supervisors Prof. dr. Bernet Elzinga and dr. Eiko Fried in Clinical Psychology at Leiden University. Her PhD is part of the Gravitation project “Communicating Networks”. In her research, she will focus on network analysis of negative and positive affect within and between depressed adolescents over time, and the influence of family interaction.

Kyra Evers is a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam as part of consortium New Science of Mental Disorders (NSMD). She obtained her Master’s degrees in Cognitive Neuroscience as well as Behavioural Science at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Supervised by Lourens Waldorp, Denny Borsboom, and Eiko Fried, Kyra is studying transitions in psychopathology, such as the onset of a depressive episode, a panick attack, or a treatment response. The main aim of her PhD is to compare early warning signals: statistical indicators such as variance and autocorrelation which may precede such transitions. Combining a theoretical interest in dynamical systems theory with a love of methodological detail, Kyra’s aim is to contribute to a roadmap for the application of early warning signals to psychological data.

Guðrún Rut Guðmundsdóttir is a PhD student within NSMD at Maastricht University. She obtained her research master’s degree in psychology at Tilburg University, which focuses on individual differences and assessment methods. There, she studied the interrelationships between personality, identity, and well-being and became passionate about taking a holistic and personalised approach to mental health. By taking a network approach and looking beyond typical disorder symptoms, the aim of the project is to gain a more nuanced insight into intra and inter-individual patterns of psychopathology in daily life and whether these patterns can be divided into clusters that may or may not mirror typical categorisations of mental disorders.


Further, we have a vast number of bachelor students, master students, RAs, volunteers, and visiting scholars involved in our research.