About

About me

Having studied English language and literature for a few years at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, I ultimately found some people foolish enough to bestow upon me BSc and MSc degrees in health and safety psychology from the University of Twente. With great power comes great responsibility, they say.

After having completed my master’s thesis on an internet intervention for benzodiazepine cessation (benzodebaas.nl) at Tactus in Enschede, I worked as a junior researcher at the department of psychology & communication of health & risk of the University of Twente; which resulted in a very nice and well-cited systematic review on persuasive system design for web-based interventions. Right now I’m at the department of clinical psychology at VU University, finishing my doctoral dissertation on a randomised controlled multi-centre trial on internet-based treatment of phobias in outpatient clinics (Netherlands Trial Register NTR2233; ZonMw grant number 80-82310-97-10015; protocol freely available here). Supervising me are my excellent supervisors; Prof. Pim Cuijpers, Prof. Annemieke van Straten and Prof. Aartjan Beekman. Yes, I need three full professors to keep me in check.

Additionally, I am a visiting fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University, supervised by Prof. Kathy Griffiths and an honorary Australian, earning me the nickname “Robbo”. Not Bruce.

Professional memberships

I am on the executive board of NSRII, charter member of the ISRII, plain old member of ESRII and a member of Triple E. I am also the type of person who giggles quietly to himself when he writes ‘member’. I am also the 5-time platinum recipient (2000, 2003, 2007, 2012, 2018) of the Robin Kok Foundation prize for Shameless Self-aggrandizement. Oh, and I’m somewhere on the list of 7.2 billion most-cited academics in the world.

Professional interests

My main professional focus of interest lies in eHealth, eMental Health, Telemedicine, persuasive system design and advancing the use of IT in (preventive) psychology.

Download my most recent professional CV in .pdf here and find my contact details here.

Unprofessional interests

Being an avid reader of (chiefly) British literature from ~1850-1950, I like to kill time by collecting books. Sometimes I even read (and re-reading) them. My favourite authors include Thomas Hardy, W. Somerset Maugham, George Orwell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Oscar Wilde, but also more contemporary literary giants such as Joseph Heller, Ian McEwan, Robin Kok, Anthony Burgess and Stephen Fry. I also love to dabble about in the kitchen, leaving a great meal and a superhuman pile of dirty dishes.

Very unprofessional interests

I consider myself marginally competent at playing fretless bass in his several bands, most notably The Monolith Deathcult, and regularly gig throughout Europe. For more on this decidedly unfascinating topic, look here. I’m an expert on the many ways to spell the word “trouser” and devote much of my time trying to rid the world of the letter “N”. In my spare time I referee illegal Mixed Martial Philology cage-fights between post-structuralists and Leavisites. I have never been Hegelean professor of philosophy at the University of Woollomooloo, but last thing I heard I am still under consideration for being in charge of the sheep dip. Additionally, I enjoy running, cycling and guinea pigs; not necessarily combined and/or in that order.