Mental Health & Social Wellbeing

Jana Knot-Dickscheit
Jana Knot-Dickscheit works as Associate Professor at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Department of Child and Family Welfare. She is the head of the Centre of Expertise Families with multiple and complex problems. Her research is practice-oriented and focuses on the evaluation of interventions (what works for whom  how and under what circumstances) for families with multiple and complex problems and so-called at-risk families. The collaboration of professionals with these families and professionals among each other is another area of interest. In addition, Jana works as a cognitive behavioural therapist and mental healthcare psychologist at Molendrift.

Extra keyword: Child and Family Welfare

Tess Osborne
Tess Osborne is a social geographer with a focus in two connecting areas: first, exploring the application of technology as a research tool and in everyday life, including biosensing, digital worlds, and GIS; second, examining questions around embodiment and health and wellbeing, particularly how these relate to the built environment. She is currently working on the Meaningful Mobility project to develop and implement new approaches to enhance research of mobility and health in later life.

Louise Meijering
Louise is associate professor in Health Geography and is leading a research programme on Well-being, mobility and attachment to place in later life. Her key contributions to the field have been on the outdoor mobility of older adults; place and identity after stroke; and the multi-dimensionality of well-being in later life. Her work is interdisciplinary, at the intersection of geography, gerontology and public health. Currently, she is leading an ERC-funded project called Meaningful Mobility, in which she aims to develop a novel approach to in- and outdoor movement in later life, in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and India.

Susan Ketner
Susan Ketner has served as professor of Comprehensive Approach to Child Abuse at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen as of 1 March 2019. Her specific background as a researcher is in diversity, parental support and parenthood. She is keen on using her professorship to improve parental support in families where parents face various types of pressure and where concerns over safety exist. In doing so, she prefers to link up research, education, policy and practice.

Extra keyword: Parenthood

Klaske Veth
Klaske Veth PhD is a professor in Sustainable HR at Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen. She obtained her PhD at the Radboud University in Nijmegen on the theme Healthy Aging@Work (nominated for best dissertation at International HRM conference). She worked in various (managerial) HR positions and sectors. At the University of Utrecht she completed the postgraduate program Coaching and Consulting in Context. She has completed her initial study Management & Organizational Sciences ('with pleasure') at the University of Tilburg. Within her professorship Klaske Veth focuses on the research lines Well-being@Work (W@W) and Leadership containing topics such as (social psychological) HRM, work engagement, healthy aging, and (personal) leadership. She also gives lectures in (post-) bachelor's and master's degree programs and supervises graduates. She has published in various (inter) national (scientific) journals and presented at (scientific) conferences (inter)nationally.

Margreet Luinge
Margreet Luinge, PhD, RD is Professor of Language Function & Healthy Ageing. Her research focuses on language development, prevention developmental language disorders in children and delaying language degeneration in elderly. In 2002 she obtained her degree in neurolinguistics at the University of Groningen. In 2005 she obtained her doctorate for the development of the language screening instrument Speech and Language Standards Primary (SNEL) at the Medical Sciences of the University of Groningen, for which she received two prizes. Margreet is a member of the national science council of the Dutch Association for Speech Therapy and Phoniatrics.

Katherine Stroebe
Katherine Stroebe is professor in social psychology at the University of Groningen. She holds the chair ‘the Social Psychology of Justice and Resilience’. Katherine is also director of the expertise centre “Social Sciences, Health and Wellbeing” and is the coordinator of the “Resilience” track of the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health. Since 2016, Katherine has headed a large-scale government funded research project into the psychosocial impact of the gas extraction in Groningen.

Katherine’s research focuses on people’s responses to individual and collective justice violations and the extent to which such responses enhance resilience rather than vulnerability. Collective justice violations, such as being discriminated against or being the victim of man-made earthquakes have always fascinated Katherine. Such violations can induce conflict-oriented behavior: protests, demonstrations and ultimately wars. Katherine is interested in what makes people abstain from conflict-oriented behavior - inducing behavior that may seem passive (but is not). Moreover, Katherine studies the long-term impact of experiences of (chronic) collective injustice on health and wellbeing, to better understand long term resilience in response to injustice, for example in the context of the gas extraction in Groningen.

Ingeborg van der Meulen
Ingeborg van der Meulen, PhD, RN, is postdoc researcher and teacher within the professorship Nursing Diagnosis at the School of Nursing, the Hanze University of Applied Science in Groningen and at the Department of Critical Care, University Medical Center Groningen. Together with her colleagues, she works on the Follow-up Intensive Care Studies (FICS) which focus on the long-term impact of an ICU admission for ICU survivors and their family members. The goal is to identify patients and family members who are at high risk of long-term impaired physical, psychological, spiritual and social well-being. In addition, we explore which interventions can be effective to support ICU survivors and their family members in regaining their quality of life after ICU admission. Key to the research is that we work with an interdisciplinary team of nurses, medical doctors, health care chaplain, students and PhD-students. In addition, research and education is combined to improve clinical outcome for patients and their family members. Divers research designs are used, for example systematic literature review, qualitative research with storytelling or semi structured interviews and cohort studies.

Laura Baams
Laura Baams is an Assistant Professor in the Youth Studies Research Group, in Pedagogy and Educational Sciences. Overall, her research addresses health disparities among LGBTQ youth, and how these can be exacerbated or diminished by social environmental factors.

Mónica López López
Mónica López López is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences. For the last 16 years, Mónica has been actively seeking a way of improving child and family welfare systems through research on decision-making, with a special interest in disparities in decision-making processes. In her research, Mónica focuses on the voice of the service users, children and families, as a powerful instrument to develop better services. Her recent projects include Hestia, a European funded project comparing policies and practices of child protection in England, Germany and the Netherlands (NORFACE, H2020); project Audre on the wellbeing and resilience of LGBTQIA+ young people in out-of-home care (FWOS); and Brighter Future on the educational experiences of children in care and adopted (Erasmus+). Mónica has been involved in transferring scientific knowledge through her teaching at the international master Youth Society and Policy, training professionals, and developing international research networks in Europe and Latin America. She is a board member of EUSARF (European Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents), and iaOBERfcs (International Association for Outcome-based Evaluation and Research on Family and Children’s Services).

Susanne Scheibe
Susanne Scheibe is Professor in Organizational Psychology at the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences of the University of Groningen, specializing in lifespan development and organizational behavior. She obtained her Ph.D. from Free University Berlin and subsequently worked as research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Germany) and Stanford University (USA). Scheibe’s research focuses on developmental changes in emotions and self-regulation during adulthood and the interplay with work conditions, occupational health, and the aging workforce. Key interests of her are understanding the emotional benefits of getting older at work, discovering the strengths and vulnerabilities of different age groups at work, and understanding how work conditions can be designed to support and foster work motivation, well-being, and effectiveness of employees at different ages and career stages.

Vera Heininga
Vera Heininga is an Assistant Professor Youth Studies. Her research draws together psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and pedagogy with the aim to unravel the psychosocial mechanisms of resilience in youth. Using an idiographic approach (i.e., diary studies), she investigates to what extent youth’s resilience - and the intergenerational transmission thereof - is shaped by contextual factors such as positive emotions, wellbeing and social relationships.