About Me
I was born in the Netherlands, which is also where I spent most of my formative years.
Currently, I’m a PhD student supervised under a co-tutelle by Andrea Ravignani of Sapienza University, Rome, and Sonja Kotz of Maastricht University, here at the BAND lab. On paper, I have a background in linguistics, though I have always been interested in finding commonalities between speech and other domains. Out of a healthy frustration with the anthropocentric side of linguistics, I found my way to a research group led by Andrea Ravignani that combined fundamental research with a comparative approach. And the best thing is, in my current capacity I am fortunate enough to be able to combine my research interests with my largest personal interest, music.
Research
Inspired by the power that (electronic) music has over society, subcultures, and people themselves, I set out to study the most regular of rhythms, like a metronome, or the simplest of drumbeats. Throughout my efforts to study how humans perceive such ‘isochrony’, a different question arose, namely: What is the opposite of isochrony? If isochrony constitutes the most regular and predictive of beats, what then is the least predictive of beats? And how does the brain process such irregularity? My PhD projects are therefore aimed at defining the two boundaries within which all different types of rhythms—more or less enjoyable—are possible: isochrony on the one hand, and the highest form of irregularity on the other.
Methods
- Behavioral experiments
- Computational modelling
- EEG analysis
Qualifications and Professional Experience
- November 2023 — present: PhD candidate at Sapienza University (Rome, Italy) and Maastricht University (Maastricht, the Netherlands)
- May 2022 — April 2023: Research assistant with the Comparative Bioacoustics Group (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
- September 2018 — July 2022: Research Master’s in Linguistics and Communication Sciences (Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
- September 2013 — November 2016: Bachelor’s in English Language and Culture (Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands)
BAND Lab 