Vitae

Positions

As of 2021: Associate Professor, University of Birmingham, UK

2015-2021: Assistant professor, University of Birmingham, UK

2012-2014: Staff Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands

2008-2011: PhD candidate, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Degrees

2018: Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE) with distinction

2012:  PhD in Social Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands

2008: Masters Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium, Magna Cum Laude

2005: Bachelor Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium, Cum laude

Grants

2022-2026: Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant for "Keep talking – mechanisms of maintaining language throughout the lifespan" (£218,663) (PI, with Dr. E. Heyselaar and Prof. L. Wheeldon as co-I's)

2020-2024: Research Council of Norway Research Grant for "Fitness, Ageing and Bilingualism (FAB): The benefits of regular physical activity and bilingualism for language abilities in healthy ageing" (£1,000,000) (Norway lead: Prof. L. Wheeldon; UK lead: Dr. K. Segaert)

2020-2023: ESRC DTC studentship  for Emma Sutton on “Understanding the inflammatory mechanisms behind the impact of cognitive training on healthy ageing.” (£50,000) (As co-supervisor)

2019-2020: Bridge (BiRmingham-lllinois Partnership for Discovery, EnGagement and Education) Seed Funding for "A joint investigation of language change and decline in healthy ageing", with Prof. K. Federmeier - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (£12,500) (PI)

2019-2022: Hillary Green PhD studentship for Roksana Markiewicz on “Synchronized brains: How empathy orchestrates the neurobiological mechanisms for cooperative success.”  (£50,000) (As main PhD-student supervisor)

2018-2021: ESRC  Research Grant "The effects of individual differences in bilingual experience on cognitive control networks" (£437,050) (co-I)

2018: Research funding from the University of Birmingham Liberal Arts & Natural Sciences program “Relating physical fitness to language decline in ageing”
(£2,624) (PI)

2017-2018: University of Agder research project development grant (35,000 NOK) (co-I)

2016-2019: ESRC DTC studentship  for Sophie M Hardy on “Investigating changes in syntactic processing across the lifespan” (£50,000) (As main PhD-student supervisor)

2016: The Wellcome Trust ISSF Independent Research Award "Language and speaking skill in the elderly and the ameliorating effects of physical fitness"  (£16,719) (PI)

2015: The  Wellcome Trust ISSF Pump-priming research grant "Uncovering the neurobiological infrastructure of syntactic language comprehension using a multi-modal simultaneous EEG-fMRI imaging approach" (£10,371) (PI)

Academic service

Institutional Responsibilities:

2020-present: Wellcome Trust Institutional Support Fund - Panel reviewer for UoB Wellcome ISSF management group

2017-present: University of Birmingham Lead for the Language, interaction and social cognition Research Theme

2017-2018: Member of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Ethical Review Committee for the University of Birmingham

2012-2015: Initiator and coordinator of an interactive public engagement website with Questions and Answers about language, available on Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Netherlands) website (www.mpi.nl - Q&A pages are available in English, Dutch and German)


Editorial service:

Editor-in-Chief for Cognition (2023-now)

Section editor for Cognition (2021-2023)

Academic editor for Scientific Reports (2018-2023)

Academic editor for PLoS One (2018-2023)

Topic board editor for Brain Sciences (2020)

 

Peer review:

Journals: Brain and Language, Frontiers in Language Sciences, Neuropsychologia, Cognition, Cerebral Cortex, PNAS, Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroimage, PLoS One, Journal of Memory and Language, European Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, Language, Language Learning, Discourse Processes, Lingua, Brain and Behavior, Neurobiology of Ageing, Neurobiology of Language, Language Cognition and Neurosciences, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Conferences: Society for Neurobiology of Language, Organization for Human Brain Mapping, AMLAP

PhD examiner: M. Kos (NL-RU), A. Veenstra (NL-RU), Merel Muylle (BE-UGENT), Consuelo Vidal Gran (UK-UoB), Willen van Boxtel (UK-Essex), Rianne Van Lieburg (BE-UAntwerpen), Zlatomira Ilchovska (UK-UoB)

Downloadable CV