Organisation

The director of the Heymans Institute for Psychological Research is prof. dr. J. R. (Ruud) den Hartigh.

The institute comprises expertise groups, an advisory board, a PhD council, and an ethical committee. Its name goes back to professor Gerard Heymans (1857-1930). He was a supporter of empirical methodology and continually introduced experiments where possible. In 1892 he established a psychology lab in Groningen, the first one in the Netherlands. In 1909, Heymans held a famous speech on “the future century of psychology”, telling of a far-off future in which a matured psychological science could solve many of humankind's problems. This resonates with the mission of the Heymans Institute to do ground breaking scientific and socially relevant research in which we try to understand human behavior from the biological to the societal level.

HI members
The Heymans Institute for Psychological Research (HI) encompasses all research of the Department of Psychology. This means that all faculty members with a research appointment are a member of the HI. Also all PhD students, researchers with temporary appointments, postdocs, as well as external PhD students, who are members of the graduate school GSS, participate in the HI.
Teachers supervising research are affiliate members of the HI. This allows them to make use of certain research facilities.