Professor by special appointment Lonneke Lenferink joins The Young Academy

Professor by special appointment at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Lonneke Lenferink, joins The Young Academy (De Jonge Akademie, DJA) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW).

Each year, the DJA selects ten talented scientists who have proven themselves academically and obtained their doctorate less than ten years ago. During their membership, they work on projects in the fields of science policy, internationalisation, interdisciplinarity and the relationship between science, society and science and art.

Lonneke Lenferink

Clinical psychologist Lonneke Lenferink researches how adults and children grieve, particularly following sudden or violent loss. She examines grief in everyday life by asking people to respond to brief questionnaires several times a day. In this way, she maps fluctuations in grief and studies how grief is transmitted between parents and children after the loss of a family member. In addition, she develops and evaluates psychological treatment programmes for adults and children who become stuck in their grieving process. Through her research, Lenferink aims to contribute to better support for the bereaved and to greater understanding of how grief develops over time.

In addition to holding a special chair, Lonneke Lenferink is affiliated with the University of Twente as a senior lecturer. She obtained her PhD from the University of Groningen in 2018 with a dissertation on the emotional impact of the prolonged disappearance of a loved one. Since then, she has conducted research into the assessment, prediction and treatment of grief-related symptoms in adults and young people. Among other projects, she monitored the mental health of relatives of the MH17 victims over a period of ten years. Together with Fonds Slachtofferhulp, she developed a public website (www.rouwbehandeling.nl) providing information about grief and its treatment.

Read more about Lonneke Lenferink and her work (in Dutch)

About The Young Academy and its members

The Young Academy is committed to securing the future of science and scholarship. It does this by communicating the value of research and by helping to improve science and scholarship as a whole. It is a platform of fifty inspired academics who conduct research, advise, share knowledge and bring people together, and who do all this while taking a special interest in young scientists and scholars. Members organise activities related to science policy, science and society, interdisciplinarity, internationalisation, education, and cross-fertilisation between the arts and sciences.

The fifty members of The Young Academy, who represent all of the Dutch universities, are jointly responsible for its identity and activities. Their engagement is therefore extremely important. They share a deeply felt enthusiasm for science and scholarship and the desire to share that enthusiasm with society. 

Members are appointed for a five-year period, with ten members being added and ten departing each year. This ensures a steady stream of new plans and ideas. Members must have received their doctorate no more than ten years prior to their appointment. They have a proven track record in their field and represent a variety of different disciplines. 

The Young Academy is an independent division of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).