Meet the Team
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Prof. Marko Jelicic
Professor of Neuropsychology and Law.
He is interested in the interface between neuropsychology and criminal law. .Marko regularly acts as an expert witness and is a member of the National Expertise Group on Special Moral Affairs (LEBZ).
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Prof. Corine de Ruiter
Professor of Forensic Psychology
She is a licensed clinical psychologist (BIG) in the Netherlands, who strives to bring scientific knowledge, assessment methods and interventions to professionals in the field, so they can deliver high quality care. Her current research focuses on the prevention of child abuse, partner violence and high conflict divorce.
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Prof. Harald Merckelbach
Professor of Psychology and Law
His research interests include the feigning of symptoms, fantasy proneness and susceptibility to pseudo-memories. He also writes a monthly column in the science supplement of the NRC Handelsblad
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Prof. Vivienne de Vogel
Professor of Forensic Mental Health Care
Her research focuses on violence risk assessment and management, gender-sensitive working in forensic care, and mental resilience of professionals. She also works at the Van der Hoeven Kliniek, a Dutch forensic psychiatric centre, the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and as Scientific Advisor Adviescollege Verloftoetsing TBS.
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Prof. Henry Otgaar
Professor of Legal Psychology
His research interest concentrates on developmental changes in memory from childhood to adulthood and in factors that relate to the development of memory illusions. Henry regularly acts as an expert witness in cases concerning the reliability of eyewitness testimonies involving child witnesses.
He is a member of t the section Forensic Psychology and the Leuven Institute of Criminology (KU Leuven)
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Prof. Brechje Dandachi-FitzGerald
She is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychotherapist (BIG) and serves as the head of the postgraduate training for psychotherapists at RINO Zuid Eindhoven. Additionally, she holds an endowed chair in Psychotherapy in the context of clinical practice, education, and science at the Open University Heerlen. Her research interests encompass symptom validity (over- and underreporting of symptoms) in psychological assessments, as well as the negative effects of psychotherapy. In her clinical capacity, she works at the Mental Health Care Institute Mondriaan.
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Dr. Glynis Bogaard
Assistant Professor
Her research areas include verbal and non-verbal lie detection such as testing the validity of credibility assessment tools; examining individual differences in lying and lie detection ability and investigative interviewing techniques.
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Dr. Sanne Houben
Assistant Professor
Her research interests include negative effects of psychotherapy and the effect of therapy (e.g., EMDR and Imagery Rescripting) on (false) memory.
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Dr. Ewout Meijer
Associate Professor
His research interest is on lie detection techniques. He strives to investigate all kinds of lie detection in a scientific way. He is an advocate of open science practices.
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Dr. Kim van Oorsouw
Assistant Professor
She is currently involved in research related to alcohol blackouts, and the effects of Aayahuasca, San Pedro, and Yoga on mental health. Besides research Kim works as an expert witness work for The Maastricht Forensic Institute. She reports in criminal matters in the field of simulation, memory loss and (alcohol) blackouts.
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Dr. Linsey Raymakers
Lecturer
Her research focuses on adults and children sexual abuse.
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Dr. Anna Sagana
Assistant Professor
Her interest is on decision-making, cognitive biases, eyewitness identification procedures and face recognition. Currently, her research focuses on tackling cognitive biases in the judiciary and alternative identification methods for masked perpetrators.
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Dr. Melanie Sauerland
Associate Professor
She is interested in eyewitness memory, both concerning eyewitness identifications and interviewing eyewitnesses. Research topics include postdictors of identification accuracy, the impact of the presence of multiple perpetrators on identification performance, and the Self-Administered Interview.
She is currently serving as the leader of the section.
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Dr. Maartje Schreuder
Researcher
Her research focuses on forensic topics related to language and speech, such as speaker recognition or earwitness identification, but also on the effects of bias on forensic (speech) experts. Further, she acts an expert witness for The Maastricht Forensic Institute, in the fields of Speaker Identification, Intelligibility Enhancement of Audio Recordings, Linguistic Text Analysis, and Auditory Confrontation for Earwitnesses.
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Paula Ghijsen
Secretary
She is in charge of handling the correspondence between external parties and members of the section.
Fresh Blood
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Emre Akça
PhD Candidate
Double degree with University of Turin. Research interest is in the area of symptom validity assessment.
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Nurul Arbiyah
PhD Candidate
Her research focuses on developing a new psychological measurement to assess the credibility of statements of victims and eyewitnesses based on psychometrics science and validate the psychometric properties of the instrument.
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Stephanie Ashton
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Her research focuses on how stress experienced while witnessing a crime can influence the accuracy of eyewitness memory.
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Anne van de Bovekamp
PhD Candidate
Her research focuses on psychology and law surrounding elder abuse in the Netherlands.
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DANIEL VAN HELVOORT
PhD Candidate
He is member of the Forensic Psychology Section and the forensic mental health care research group at GGzE. His research focuses on antecedents of poor symptom validity and their implications for assessment
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Mara Georgiana Moldoveanu
PhD Candidate
Dodble degree at the RIDDLE LAB of Babes-Bolyai University and the section of Forensic Psychology (UM). Her research focuses on self-deception, motivations underlying self-deception (such as cognitive dissonance), and the relation between self-deception, lying, memory, and malingering.
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Chunlin Li
PhD Candidate
Double degree at Leuven Institute of Criminology (KU Leuven) and the section of Forensic Psychology. Her research focuses on nonbelieved memories and the impact of undermining belief on traumatic memory.
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Mengying Zhang
PhD Cadidate
Her research focuses on face recognition and more specifically on how to improve the identification of masked faces.
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Yikang Zhang
PhD candidate
His research focuses on memory distrust, nonbelieved memory, and false memory. He is interested in exploring how the metacognitive appraisal of memory affects the memory reconstruction process. In addition, he is also interested in research in judgment and decision making as well as evolutionary psychology.
Exteral PhDs
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Eveline Schippers
Phd candidate
Collaboration between he section of Forensic Psychology and The Forensic Care Specialists. This is a Dutch centre for forensic psychiatry. Her research focuses on the etiology of sexual deviance in general and as a risk factor in sex offenders.
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Annabel Simjouw
Phd Candidate
Collaboration between the section of Forensic Psychology and The Forensic Care Specialists. This is a Dutch centre for forensic psychiatry. Her research focuses on trauma-informed care within forensic psychiatric treatment
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Carola van Tilburg
PhD Student
Her research focuses on personality characteristics, motivation, stress reactivity, cognitive bias and treatment integrity on the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral treatment in partner-violent men.
Former members and collaborators
Dr. Irena Boskovic
is an Assistant Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her expertise is in detection of malingering.
is as a research associate at the section of Forensic Psychology and at the Leuven Institute of Criminology, KU Leuven. Her research focuses on risk assessment and management within compulsory residential youth care
Dr. Tamara De Beuf
is a former PhD student of the section of Forensic Psychology. Her research focused on the mechanisms surrounding the formation of false memories
Dr. Bruna Ferreira Da Silva Calado
successfully defended her doctoral dissertation: ‘Probation officers in Turkey: The relevance of attitudes toward offenders’ on September 21, 2022.
Dr. Esra Ersayan Tuncer
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. Her research focuses on the role of interview environments on interviewer-interviewee dynamics and the disclosure of information.
Dr. Kathy Hoogesteyn
successfully defended her dissertation entitled ‘Child investigative interviewing and risk assessment in Dutch child abuse investigations: Towards evidence-based practice’, on November 3, 2022.
Brenda is now Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology at the Open University, Heerlen, the Netherlands.
Dr. Brenda Erens
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. Her research focuses on is forensic risk assessment and bias in decision-making.
Dr. Jennifer Kamorowski
is a researcher at the Department of Psychopharmacology. She combines the fields of psychopharmacology and forensic psychology, Her research focuses on investigating the effects of popular drugs on memory.
Dr. Lilian Kloft
is an Assistant Professor at the University of Bari Aldo Moro. His expertise is in forensic psychopathology and neuropsychology.
Dr. Ivan Mangiulli
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. Her research focuses on undermining memory for experiences of sexual abuse.
Dr. Tameka Romeo
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. Her research focuses on the effects of stress on eyewitness memory.
Dr. Carey Marr
is an Associate Professor at University College Maastricht. Her research focus is on false confessions and their impact on wrongful convictions.
Dr. Jenny Schell-Leugers
successfully defended her dissertation on March 15, 2022 at Philipps-University Marburg. She is affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology at Maastricht University. Her research focuses on voluntary false confessions and why people take the blame for others.
Dr. Teresa Schneider
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. His research examines the current quality of child investigative interviewing in Indonesia as well as the efficacy of training Indonesian police officers in an evidence-based child investigative interview.
Dr. Nael Sumampouw
obtained a double doctorate degree from Catholic University Leuven and Maastricht University on June 1, 2022. The title of her dissertation is: ‘Juvenile delinquency and rehabilitation: Examining the Good Lives Model’.
Dr. Colinda Serie
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. Her expertise is in eyewitness identification procedures, memory, decision making, and face recognition.
Dr. Nina Tupper
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. Her research focuses on the impact of embedded lies on the verbal quality of statements and the implications for credibility assessment tools.
Dr. Brianna Verigin
works as a researcher in the Van der Hoeven Kliniek, and as a lecturer forensic psychiatry at the Utrecht University. Her research focuses on aggressive incidents during clinical forensic psychiatric treatment: the prevalence of these incidents, characteristics of violent inpatients and experiences of victimization from both staff and patient perspectives.
Dr. Nienke Verstegen
is a researcher affiliated with the section of Forensic Psychology. His research focuses on the role of circadian rhythm on eyewitness memory.
