transforming collaboration

My background is in cognitive neuroscience, I recently joined Wageningen University as a postdoctoral researcher and work freelance as a trainer (mostly with hfp-consulting). My work focuses on inner and interpersonal development in interdisciplinary settings: what challenges do we experience when our roles and relationships are not clearly defined? Which skills and what kind of structures can provide crucial support? Over the next two years, I am looking to do research that at once supports and investigates these processes of orienting together.

I need to move – I cycle, play squash, dance contact and climb; I am also an outdoors person and builder – I visit the Rhine in the morning, I have spent weeks cycling and sleeping out in my hammock throughout Europe, and over the past few years I have built many beds in different cities, as well as a garden house in my home town Hamburg.

I love lying down on the floor, entering cold water, and getting to know people.

I am in the middle of transitioning to the Netherlands, into new roles, networks and response-abilities. I am very grateful for this opportunity – and expect more changes to come next.

This website gives an overview of recent ideas and activities, shares some of the colourful notes that I take (during meetings or to sort my thoughts), offers supplements to my published work, and points to (some of) the other people involved.

Enjoy!

As a PhD student of relational (participatory) and embodied approaches to social cognition, I used interactive games to investigate social behaviour at multiple levels: can we predict participants’ experience from their personality differences, performance levels and interpersonal movement coordination? During my PhD, I realised I care a lot about application: how can I use what I learn to curate spaces for meaningful social encounter? I thus embarked on several collaborative initiatives to bring relational and embodied cognition into our everyday life as researchers: the playful academic presents possibilities to bring embodied exploration and playfulness into academic collaboration, and the enactive research group offers a weekly online meeting space to people interested in a more generous and collaborative research culture. I was also centrally involved in organising 2022’s ESRI, a yearly conference hosted by Mind and Life Europe that brings together western science and buddhist practitioners.

Now in the Netherlands, I want to conduct research that strengthens relationships. Specifically, between the diverse professionals involved in making urban development more sustainable. How does a collaboration between diverse professionals look like that works ‘at eye level’? What do we need to express, listen to, and act on what matters? ..to all parties involved and affected by our work? My ambition is that this focus on interpersonal development not only empowers individuals but also helps us rethink organisations – what kind of culture and social structures do we need to support us in our work?

The TBL infra project is a wonderful opportunity to integrate my research and training backgrounds. I will use it to ask: how can a research attitude (the commitment to keep on relaxing / questioning the certainty of one’s assumptions) lead to better training outcomes? How can a training attitude (enhancing our ability to face challenges – introduce useful tools, create a learning environment, authentically share from our experience, facilitate practice, learn from and with each other) lead to more insightful research?