Meet the team

Bart Soenens is a professor of developmental and motivational psychology at Ghent University. His research mainly focuses on the role of parents in the psychosocial development of children and adolescents. With Self-Determination Theory as a central framework, this research highlights both growth-promoting forms of parenting (such as autonomy support and structure) and more undermining forms of parenting (such as psychological control and overprotection). He also studies parenthood in a broader sense, with attention to themes such as parental well-being and the development of parental identity.

Maarten Vansteenkiste is a full professor of motivational and developmental psychology at Ghent University. His research focuses on motivation, basic psychological needs, and well-being, as well as the supportive role of socialization figures (e.g., teachers, parents, and sport coaches) in these processes. Over the past 25 years, he has contributed to the development, refinement, and valorization of Self-Determination Theory and related motivational frameworks across various life domains, such as education, parenting, sport, and healthcare.

Matteo Giletta is Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at Ghent University. His research focuses on adolescence, with particular attention to the role of stress and social relationships, especially peer interactions, in the psychosocial development of young people. A central aim of his work is to investigate the interplay between psychological and physiological processes in order to better understand health risks during adolescence. His research includes school-based studies using a broad range of methodologies, including intensive and long-term longitudinal designs, standardized laboratory stress paradigms, and measures of various biological processes (e.g., cortisol, inflammation).

Peter Prinzie is a full professor of developmental psychology at Ghent University. His research adopts a lifespan perspective and focuses on how personality and parenting—and especially their interplay—shape the development of children and adolescents, and how these influences continue into adulthood. In 1999, he launched the Flemish Study on Parenting, Personality and Development (www.fsppd.be). In his work, he also pays particular attention to the development of children with complex care needs. Recently, he obtained funding through the Odysseus programme for the interdisciplinary research project Emerging Adulthood: The Time of Your Life, in which he focuses on the resilience and psychosocial development of young adults, as well as on the development of innovative interventions using virtual reality.

Wim Beyers is a professor of developmental psychology at Ghent University. His research focuses on the psychosocial development of adolescents, with autonomy development, identity development, and sexual development as central themes. His research also pays considerable attention to the role of the social context in adolescent development, specifically how parents and teachers can contribute. Methodologically, he focuses on quantitative longitudinal research. Drawing on this expertise, he also offers workshops on longitudinal data analysis.

Bram Van Bockstaele works as a postdoctoral researcher on the Odysseus project. His current research interests mainly concern emotion regulation, investigating how people deal with emotions and under which conditions certain emotion regulation strategies predict better or worse outcomes than others. He also has a background in cognition-emotion interactions. In this work, he examined how cognitive processes such as attention or memory influence how people feel, and conversely how certain emotions influence those same cognitive processes.

Daphne van den Bogaard works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Motivational and Developmental Psychology at Ghent University. After working for 10 years as a psychologist and systemic therapist (Psychiatric Centre Karus), she now seeks to build bridges between scientific insights and everyday life. Her research focuses on need crafting: the skill of consciously taking action to satisfy the needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence or to reduce frustrations around these needs. Daphne develops (online) interventions for various target groups to strengthen this skill. Although the main focus is on young people themselves, she also works on training parents and teachers.

Joachim Waterschoot is a psychologist and statistician and works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University, within the Centre for Developmental and Motivational Psychology. In his doctoral research, he examined how people can motivate themselves in challenging circumstances, which led to large-scale research on the role of motivation and basic psychological needs in the behavior and well-being of the population during the COVID-19 crisis. In doing so, he mapped how policy choices and the evolution of the pandemic interacted with people’s psychological functioning. In his current postdoctoral research, he builds on this work by studying how societal contexts, such as threat and the nature of policy, influence citizens’ well-being and behavior. He combines insights from Self-Determination Theory with large-scale cross-national data to understand how psychological functioning and societal resilience can be sustainably supported.

Jolien Braet works as a postdoctoral researcher on the Breathe to Thrive FWO project. Her research focuses on how slow breathing can contribute to strengthening adolescents’ mental well-being. With a background in emotion regulation research and a broad interest in the link between physiological processes and mental health, she now investigates how breathing exercises can have effects in daily life through mechanisms such as heart rate variability, brain activity, and emotional dynamics. By actively involving adolescents, parents, and clinicians in her work, she aims to make slow breathing feasible and applicable within clinical practice.

Khawla Ajana is a postdoctoral researcher in motivational and developmental psychology at Ghent University. Her research focuses on the development of virtual reality interventions to support mental well-being. She develops digital tools that help young adults cope with various challenges during their transition to adulthood, with a particular focus on emotion regulation and identity development. With a background in psychology, cognitive science, and human-technology interaction, her work bridges disciplines to create user-centered technologies that promote psychological growth. Khawla obtained a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Sorbonne University in Paris, a master’s degree in cognitive science and ergonomics from the University of Bordeaux, and a PhD in psychological sciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain.

Nathalie Michels works as a postdoctoral researcher on the Outside-in project. With her background in biomedical sciences, she found her passion in public health research through the links between psychosocial factors (stress, eating behavior) and physiological factors (obesity, hormones, inflammation). From a holistic perspective, she is currently developing interventions that strengthen emotional and physiological resilience by making use of nature-rich environments and slow breathing.

Nele Flamant is affiliated with Ghent University as a postdoctoral researcher in motivational and developmental psychology. Her research focuses on how parents and adolescents interact and how this affects their well-being. In her doctoral research, she examined how children and adolescents cope with controlling parents and teachers, and how this influenced their well-being. Her postdoctoral research focuses on how parenting affects adolescents’ psychosocial development, and how adolescents’ behavior may elicit certain parenting styles from their parents.

Sofie Morbée is affiliated with Ghent University as a postdoctoral researcher in motivational and developmental psychology. Her research focuses on optimizing athletes’ motivation, well-being, and performance, and on the supportive role that coaches and parents can play in this. In her doctoral research, she examined which factors lead coaches to adopt either a motivating or demotivating coaching style (e.g., pressure from club management, contingent self-worth). In her postdoctoral research, she investigates how coaches can set high standards for athletes in a motivating and supportive way.

Beatrijs Vandenkerckhove is affiliated with Ghent University as a teaching assistant in developmental and motivational psychology. She teaches practical classes in developmental psychology and supervises internships for bachelor students. In addition, she focuses on translating Self-Determination Theory into practice, with particular attention to the educational context and the mental well-being of young people. She also works as a care coordinator in higher education, supporting young people in their academic pathway and personal challenges. In her PhD, she studied how personality factors and need frustration play a role in the development of psychopathology among young people.

Fé De Mulder works as an assistant, combining support for teaching within the research group with her own research. Her doctoral research concerns the theme of emotion regulation. Specifically, she examines different ways of dealing with emotions, with an emphasis on adaptive ways of handling emotions. She studies these emotion regulation styles both from a theoretical perspective and as applied in various contexts, including parenting, education, and sport.

Jinte Vennincx works as an assistant, combining support for teaching with her own research. In her teaching activities, she helps supervise the practical sessions for the courses Developmental Psychology and Contemporary Developmental Psychological Theories. In her doctoral research, she investigates the “roots” of controlling parenting in the 21st century, focusing mainly on overprotective parenting and (inter)generational processes.

Nele Laporte is affiliated with Ghent University as a teaching assistant in developmental and motivational psychology. She teaches practical classes in developmental psychology, motivational psychology, and internship coaching for bachelor students. She also focuses on translating Self-Determination Theory into practice, with particular attention to the educational context and the mental well-being of young people. In addition, Nele works as a policy staff member at Howest University of Applied Sciences, where she helps develop policy aimed at strengthening staff well-being. In her PhD, she investigated how people can proactively take charge of their own basic psychological needs and well-being through the skill of need crafting. She also co-developed an online training, LifeCraft, to strengthen this skill.

Anne-Fleur Bogaert joined Expertisecentrum TALENT in January, a collaboration between KU Leuven, the University of Antwerp, and Ghent University. TALENT stands for TAiLoring EducatioN and care to Talents of youth. The centre aims to gain a better understanding of the psychosocial, motivational, and learning development of cognitively high-functioning children and adolescents and how this can be promoted. In addition, translating scientific insights into practical materials for educational practice is an important objective. In her PhD, Anne-Fleur focuses on the influence of parental participation within the educational trajectory of cognitively high-functioning students.

As a PhD researcher, Bente Verhelst is interested in the experiences that parenthood brings and studies how these can be both enriching and challenging. Her research focuses on identity issues faced by (future) parents, as well as the more emotional aspects of parenthood, such as parental stress. The attunement and mutual influence between parent and child also form a central theme in her work.

Berdien Vrijders works as a PhD researcher on the themes of parenting and intonation. She studies how parents use different motivating styles through their voice, such as autonomy support and control, to encourage, stimulate, and guide their children. Through various experimental studies, she examines whether these different styles have different effects on young children and adolescents (behaviorally, emotionally, and psychophysiologically), whether there are individual differences in both producing and perceiving different kinds of intonation, and whether parents can be trained to communicate in a more autonomy-supportive way.

Bram Steeman is a PhD researcher affiliated with the Developmental Psychology research group at Ghent University and the Institute for Family and Sexuality Studies at KU Leuven. He works under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Wim Beyers (UGent) and Prof. Dr. Erick Janssen (KU Leuven). Bram’s research focuses on sexual development during adolescence, with the aim of identifying determinants that predict a person’s sexual developmental trajectory. He focuses on temperament and personality, but also on other factors such as substance use, attachment, and parental attitudes. His research aims to develop sex education programs tailored to the individual so that young people receive the information they themselves need.

In her doctoral research, Elke focuses on motivation in education. More specifically, she studies how students and young people can motivate themselves when they experience a motivational dip. She also examines the concept of “self-motivation” more broadly: how can we understand it, what influences these skills, and how can we develop trainings to strengthen people in this regard?

Emmelien started her PhD in 2025 on the Breathe FWO project at Ghent University on stress reduction among adolescents. Her PhD involves implementing a resonant breathing intervention among secondary school students experiencing elevated stress levels. As stress manifests itself in different domains, she uses both physiological and psychological parameters to map stress levels comprehensively. In this way, she aims to develop a low-threshold intervention that helps young people reduce their stress.

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After an earlier career as a programme manager and lecturer at Maastricht University, Joris van Poecke recently started his research within a joint PhD programme between Maastricht University and Ghent University. He is mainly interested in the influence of teaching styles and autonomy-supportive educational approaches on basic psychological needs and motivation. Ultimately, this should lead to a proposal for restructuring certain compulsory courses that are typically associated with high amotivation.

Karo obtained a master’s degree in Theoretical and Experimental Psychology from Ghent University in 2025. During her studies, she gained experience in research on stress regulation, including through an internship at Leiden University where she supported studies on stress buffering, EEG, attentional processes, and virtual reality. These experiences strengthened her interest in psychophysiological processes and innovative research methods. Since October 2025, she has been affiliated with the Odysseus project as a PhD student. Within this project, Karo focuses on how virtual reality can be used to help young adults with emotion regulation and identity development. In doing so, she aims to examine how such innovative methods can not only yield immediate benefits but also contribute to young adults’ well-being and resilience in the longer term.

Lowie is pursuing a PhD on gaming and online gambling among adolescents. He studies how the boundaries between these two activities are increasingly blurring, how parents can play a protective role in the emergence of potentially problematic gaming behavior, and how the balance between offline and online experiences shapes young people’s way of dealing with media. He has a strong interest in longitudinal quantitative research, in the role of a technologically ever-changing society in adolescent development, and in the challenges this creates for parents.

Marlies Van de Casteele is a PhD researcher in motivational and developmental psychology at Ghent University. Her research focuses on the impact of social media on adolescents’ mental well-being and sleep. She studies how adolescents experience autonomy, relatedness, and competence online, and to what extent these basic psychological needs are also fulfilled in other life domains such as school and leisure time. In this way, she seeks to better understand the relative importance of online versus offline experiences. Her broader interest concerns strengthening adolescent well-being in the digital age, including through evidence-based advice and intervention studies.

Melodia Koupa is pursuing a PhD on personality development within the Odysseus project. She studies how personality traits and types are related to the way young adults navigate the transition to adulthood. Through her research, Melodia seeks to understand why some young adults move through this transition smoothly, whereas others are more vulnerable to difficulties such as mental health problems.

Sam Houthuys joined the Odysseus project in February 2025 as a PhD student. Within this project, he investigates how young adults regulate their emotions and shape their identity based on a particular parenting history and personality development, and how this relates to their well-being. In doing so, he studies both long-term associations and daily fluctuations in emotion regulation and identity development.

As a PhD researcher, Tessa studies the role parents can play in the social media use of early adolescents. In doing so, she focuses not only on the influence of parents but also on the interplay with the role of peers. Through her research, she hopes to provide parents with practical and scientifically grounded tools to better deal with the additional parenting challenges that social media bring.

Tong Lin is a PhD student whose research focuses on the role of peer relationships in adolescents’ psychological development. With a particular focus on victimization by bullying, her work investigates the mechanisms through which experiences of bullying and bullying behavior affect well-being, as well as the heterogeneity among victims of bullying during adolescence. By combining longitudinal panel data with intensive longitudinal research designs, her research aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of adolescents’ social world and its implications for their mental well-being.

Tünde began her academic trajectory in educational sciences, where she worked with children with learning difficulties and young people in foster care. To better understand emotional and behavioral adjustment, she subsequently studied psychology and then completed a Research Master in Clinical and Developmental Psychopathology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. During her master’s, she collaborated with the University of Valencia on her thesis, in which she studied variability in positive emotion regulation using experience sampling methodology. In November 2025, she started as a PhD student at Ghent University. Her research focuses on emotion regulation, with particular attention to flexibility in strategy use. She is especially interested in longitudinal and ecological approaches that examine how these processes develop during the transition to adulthood and how they shape trajectories of mental health and well-being.

Charlotte Schrooyen is affiliated with the Odysseus project at Ghent University. As a data manager, she supports the preparation and follow-up of the longitudinal research lines and the management of the rich research data. Previously, she obtained her PhD on the transition to parenthood, in which she studied the role of parental identity in relation to well-being and early parenting. In addition, Charlotte works as a clinical psychologist at CAR Ter Kouter, where she supports children with developmental difficulties and assists their parents with the challenges of parenthood.

Gaël Vanhalst works as a VR developer on the Odysseus project at Ghent University. With his expertise in game design and immersive technologies, he develops VR applications that are used, among other things, for scientific research within the project. Previously, he was active at Howest within the DAE Research group, where he was involved in the application of AR, VR, and other immersive technologies across different sectors, including industry and heritage.

Nathalie Coorevits is affiliated with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences as educational support staff. There, she teaches practical classes in the domain of developmental psychology related to the theme of ego integrity. As internal internship coordinator, she supervises master’s students in their internship trajectory. Drawing on her clinical experience as a clinical psychologist, she contributes to linking the basic psychological needs as described within Self-Determination Theory to clinical practice.

Elien Mabbe holds a PhD in psychology, is a visiting professor at Ghent University, and works as a psychologist in her practice Vlindertijd. Her research focuses on themes such as need-supportive parenting and emotion regulation in children and adolescents. In her doctoral research, she focused on parenting and the role of children’s personality within it. In her postdoctoral research, she focused on day-to-day parenting through diary research and on developing an intervention study for parents to help support the way they deal with their teenager’s emotions. She translates her scientific knowledge into practical applications within her practice Vlindertijd, where she works with children, adolescents, and their parents.

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Full Professor of Educational Psychology in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney, visiting us in 2025.

Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, visiting us in 2026.

Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, visiting us in 2026.

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, visiting us in 2026.

Professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at Australian Catholic University, visiting us in 2026.

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