Research team

Tina Kretschmer

Principal Investigator

What are you working on within the project? Most of my time is spent managing the project, i.e., discussing the different components with PhD student and postdoc and making sure that all activities are going as planned. Next to this, I love being able exploring the biosocial interplay of transmission of traits and experiences across generations and use my remaining time to learn new methods.

What excites you about this project? Everything (maybe except for some of the administrative tasks), especially the possibility to explore different perspectives on peer experiences and opportunity to unite several of my research interests in one project. I'm also very excited about open science practices and glad to be able to mentor junior researchers in pre-registration, transparency, and generally rigorous practice.

What is your favorite place where you've worked or studied? I did my PhD in Brighton and worked in London for two years, both places I love and miss, but I am not sure I would swap my house and garden and in north of the province of Groningen to go back.

Charlotte Vrijen

Postdoctoral researcher

What are you working on within the project? I investigate whether social experiences in adolescence (for example, bullying, being bullied, friendships) are transmitted from parents to children. My main focus is on genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, that is, whether adolescent peer experiences of parents are transmitted to their children by passing on DNA or by passing on environmentally induced changes to gene expression.

What excites you about this project? To work in a fantastic team on an innovative subject with lots of challenges and ample opportunities to learn new methods.

What is your favorite place where you've worked or studied? Looking forward to go to Montreal for learning epigenetic analyses.

Rozemarijn van der Ploeg

Research affiliate

What are you working on within the project? I advise on and contribute to research on peer relations.

What excites you about this project? The wide variety of possibilities to gain insight into how peers interact and why they do so.

What is your favorite place where you've worked or studied? Groningen, obviously!  But would love to work in Canada for a while.

Nynke Douma

Honours student

What are you working on within the project? I help and support other team members with several different tasks within the project, as well as managing the webpage and its content. Moreover, I have my own literature research project within the subject of this project that I work on.

What excites you about this project? What excites me about this project is first and foremost the team and the way we work - it's really interesting to keep up with what every member of the team is currently working on. Multiple aspects of the subjects also interest me - particularly peer victimization & hostile attribution bias as well as the question how and  to which extent parents transfer their own experiences to their children.

What is your favorite place where you've worked or studied? So far I have only studied at the University of Groningen, and I really like it here, but I’d love to study in Paris someday.

Michelle Spix

Research Master student

What are you working on within the project? So far, I mainly looked around to get a first impression of the way the project works and to learn about the different sub-topics and lines of research. In the future, I will probably help with the coding of parent-child interactions and a literature review to prepare for the qualitative part of the project.

What excites you about this project? What I really like about the project is that it takes different levels of explanation into account when looking at the development of interpersonal behavior. I think the use of longitudinal data offers a chance to better disentangle genetic, environmental and epigenetic influences, which otherwise can hardly be achieved. Moreover, I like the richness of different sub-questions that can be asked in the process of the bigger project and that so many different methods are employed and combined.

What is your favorite place where you've worked or studied? So far I only studied in Groningen, so this is a tough question. But generally I could imagine staying in the Netherlands for my later work.

CAPE Alumni:

Maria Wiertsema: Research Assistant (March 2018 - March 2019)