CCAM - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Assistant Professor, Tilburg University
Job Titles:
- Research Manager
- Senior Staff Member
Amber van der Wal (PhD, 2022) is postdoctoral researcher on project AWeSome (Adolescents, Well-being, and Social media) as part of the Youth and Media Entertainment program group at the Department of Communication Science and the Research Manager of the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR). In addition, Amber teaches in the Master and PhD program. From 2016 to 2021, Amber was a PhD candidate at ASCoR studying teens' differential preferences for humor and aggression in media entertainment and their potential consequences. Before that, she studied Social Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam.
Her current research focuses on the role of technology and media entertainment in the lives of children and adolescents. As a member of project AWeSome, Amber studies the relationship between adolescents' social media use and well-being, with a particular focus on the role of humor in this relationship.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor Communication Science and Researcher
Annemarie van Oosten is an Assistant Professor Communication Science and researcher in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, ASCoR, at the University of Amsterdam. From 2003 until 2009 she studied child & youth psychology (BA, 2007, cum laude) and social- and health psychology (research master, 2009, cum laude) at Utrecht University. She received her PhD in 2015 at the department of Communication Science, at the University of Amsterdam. She is currently investigating the role of social media and digital technology in relation to young people's sexuality, as well as young people's resilience to stereotypical or biased sexual messages in the media.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor in Communication Science at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research
Caroline van Straten works as an Assistant Professor in Communication Science at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam. She completed her PhD on the emergence of social relationships between children and robots at the same department in November 2021, after having obtained her BA (French) and MSc degrees (Artificial Intelligence; both cum laude) from Utrecht University. In her current position as Assistant Professor, she continues to investigate children's social interactions and relationships with robots, while also studying human-machine communication more broadly.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Professor of Communication, Radboud University
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Senior Staff Member
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Assistant Professor, Utrecht University
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication
Dominique Wirz (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, ASCoR, at the University of Amsterdam. She studied Communication at the Berlin University of the Arts (B.A) and University of Zurich (M.A.). In 2018 she obtained her PhD from the University of Zurich. Before joining ASCoR in 2023, she was senior researcher at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). She was also a Fulbright visiting scholar at Michigan State University (2021) and a visiting researcher at ASCoR (2022).
Her research focuses on infotainment on social media, especially Instagram and TikTok. Further, she is interested in psychological richness as a dimension of entertainment experiences in digital media use. To study the impact of digital media, she employs innovative methodological approaches, such as experiments, experience sampling, tracking data, and data donation.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Assistant Professor, Radboud University
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Educational Researcher at Squla, Educational Platform for Children
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication
Frank M. Schneider is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. In his current research, he is mainly concerned with media choice, processes, and research different areas (for example, digital communication, entertainment research, political communication). He focuses on the relationship between entertainment experiences and information processing and its potentials for learning and behavioral change. Furthermore, he is interested in how people use media for coping. In addition, he explores the impact of online ostracism and the pressure to be always connected in social media environments on the users' well-being.
Frank M. Schneider studied psychology, communication psychology and media education at the Universities of Constance and Koblenz-Landau (Germany), worked in the media research department of the German broadcast station SWR (2001-2004), held an interim junior professorship for methods of empirical social research at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern (2005/2006) and was a research assistant and research associate at the Landau Institute for Communication Psychology and Media Education from 2001 to 2013, where he received his doctorate on the topic of subjective movie film evaluation criteria in 2012. From 2013 to 2023, interrupted by being an interim chair for media psychology at the University of Hohenheim (August 2014 to March 2015), he worked as a postdoc at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim, where, among other things, he led a DFG-funded project in the field of political entertainment research and a subproject in the collaborative research project "digilog@bw - Digitalisierung im Dialog." From February to September 2023, he was deputy head of the Everyday Media Lab at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM; Knowledge Media Research Center) in Tübingen, Germany.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Assistant Professor, Utrecht University
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Co - Founder and Senior Researcher of Project AWeSome
Ine Beyens is an Assistant Professor with tenure in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the effects of media on the emotional, psychological, and social development of children and adolescents. Her current work investigates the effects of social media use on adolescents' well-being. In her work, she employs intensive longitudinal data, for example through experience sampling methods, to capture what adolescents do, feel, and think during their daily life.
Ine is co-founder and senior researcher of Project AWeSome, an interdisciplinary collaboration that investigates the effects of social media use on various aspects of adolescents' well-being. Within this project, Ine co-developed a novel, idiographic approach to study how the effects of (social) media use differ from person to person. As a strong advocate of Open Science, Ine is passionate to share her insights within and beyond the academic community, as a speaker at national and international academic and non-academic conferences and symposia.
Irene I. van Driel (PhD, 2017 Indiana University) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and the Center for research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media (CcaM). She has studied processing of and responses to stereotyping in the media and the intersection of new media use, self-regulation and development. She is part of a research team working on an innovative, longitudinal project aiming to understand the mechanisms involved in the effects of social media use on the well-being of adolescents: Adolescents, Wellbeing and Social Media (project AWeSome).
Irene received a MSc in Neurosciences at the Free University Amsterdam and MA in Journalism and New Media at Leiden University and worked in the media industry previous to pursuing her PhD. She completed her dissertation Losing Control? The Influence of Contemporary Media Use on Self-regulation of Emotion, Cognition and Behavior (The Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington). During the final year of her PhD program she taught at the Department of Strategic Communication at Butler University through the Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship and stayed on as Visiting Assistant Professor through May 2018. Her interdisciplinary research has won awards from the International Communication Association (Top Faculty Paper award, 2018, sports interest group) and from the National Communication Association (Top Student Paper Award, 2015, Mass Communication division).
Jeroen Lemmens obtained his doctorate in November 2010 at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research with his dissertation on the causes and consequences of pathological gaming. During his time as a PhD-student, he investigated the psychosocial antecedents and consequences of online computer game addiction among adolescents. The project consisted of (a) the creation of a reliable and valid survey instrument to measure computer and video game addiction; (b) an investigation of the relationship between game addiction, impulse control, and attentional bias; (c) a longitudinal study of the psychosocial causes and consequences of game addiction among adolescents, and (d) a longitudinal study on the effects of pathological gaming on aggressive behavior.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Senior Staff Member
- Director CcaM / Professor of Communication in the Digital Society
Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She is the Director of the Center for research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media (CcaM), the Program Group Leader for Youth & Media Entertainment at ASCoR, and recently completed a 4-year term as the Chair of Children, Adolescents, and the Media division of the International Communication Association - the largest academic division of children and media scholars worldwide. An award-winning scholar, Dr. Piotrowski's research investigates how youth process and comprehend media content, with specific attention to the potential benefits of media. She is particularly focused on understanding how young users process media content (cognitively, affectively, and physiologically) and the role of individual differences (dispositional, developmental, and social) in the selection and processing of media content. In recent years, she has begun to dive deeply into the topic of digital literacy in childhood and adolescence.
Dr. Piotrowski frequently speaks at academic and trade conferences on the role of media in the lives of young people today. Moreover, with a strong belief in forging the divide between academic scholarship and societal practice, Dr. Piotrowski often shares her work in higher education classrooms, at public policy organizations, at children's media organizations, and with childcare providers both within the Netherlands and worldwide. She is the co-author of the book Plugged In: How Media Attract and Affect Youth (Yale University Press, 2017), and regularly publishes in communication, psychology, and education journals.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Professor
- Program Group Leader, Youth & Media Entertainment / Professor of Media Entertainment
Jochen Peter (Ph.D., 2003) is a Full Professor in the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, ASCoR, at the University of Amsterdam. In 2009, he was awarded the prestigious Young Scholar Award of the International Communication Association (ICA), the world's largest academic communication association, for outstanding early career research. In the same year, he received a highly competitive 800.000 Euro Vidi grant from the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO). His research focuses on the consequences of adolescents' media use for their sexual socialization and psycho-social development. Specifically, he investigates the effects of teenagers' use of online sexually explicit material on their sexual attitudes and behaviors. His recent research has won 17 awards from the International Communication Association (ICA), the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).
Since September 2013 Jochen Peter has been director of the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, ASCoR, of the University of Amsterdam.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Assistant Professor, Utrecht University
Lara previously worked at the Leibniz-Institut fuer Wissensmedien (knowledge media research center) in Tuebingen, Germany, as a PhD student after finishing her Bachelor (University of Mainz) and Master (University of Hohenheim) in Communication Science. Lara received several awards such as the Best Dissertation Award of the Mobile Communication Division of the International Communication Association for her PhD thesis and the Paul-Lazarsfeld Scholarship for an outstanding master thesis with a methods focus from the Methods Division of the German Communication Association.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Researcher, Leuven School for Mass Communication Research
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Senior Staff Member
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Post Doctoral Researcher
Loes Janssen is a postdoctoral researcher in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on adolescents' well-being, parent-adolescent interaction, and the effects of social media on well-being of adolescents. In her work, she employs intensive longitudinal data (EMA/ESM) to capture the daily life experiences of adolescents.
Janssen is involved in Project AWeSome, an interdisciplinary collaboration that investigates the effects of social media use on various aspects of adolescents' well-being. Janssen is affiliated with the Center for research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media (CcaM). Prior to joining the University of Amsterdam, she completed her PhD 'Changes in perspective: Parenting and well-being of adolescents in daily life' in 2022 at Leiden University (department Clinical Psychology) under supervision of prof.dr. Bernet Elzing and dr. Bart Verkuil.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Full Professor, Tilburg University
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Lecturer, University of Utrecht Applied Science, Creative Business Program
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Professor of Communication, Radboud University
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Distinguished Professor at the University of Amsterdam
- Fellow of the ICA
- Founding Director CcaM / Distinguished University Professor of Media, Youth and Society
- Researchers
Valkenburg is a fellow of the ICA, the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Holland Society of Science and Humanities. In 2003, she founded CcaM, the Center for Research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media, which is part of the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. Her most recent open access book, Plugged In, was published by Yale University Press.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Senior Staff Member
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Researcher at Rutgers, Kenniscentrum Seksualiteit
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Senior Staff Member
- Assistant Professor of Communication Science at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research
Saurabh is an Assistant Professor of Communication Science at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam. Before serving as a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (Pembroke College), Saurabh received his PhD in education policy (minor in computer science) from Stanford University, where he was a Human-centered AI Fellow, a Stanford Data Science Scholar, and a William R and Sara Hart Kimball Fellow. His prior background spans computer science engineering (BITS Pilani), economics (Stanford), and education (TISS).
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Senior Staff Member
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Senior Staff Member
- Associate Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research
Sindy R. Sumter is an associate Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (University of Amsterdam) where she combines research, teaching, and service work in the department of communication science. Her research focuses on the interplay between digital media and socio-emotional functioning among young people. She is particularly interested in the way digital (mobile) technologies and entertainment media can shape social interactions and identity formation of tweens, teens and young adults.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Project Manager, Stichting KijkOnderzoek
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Senior Researcher BCU, USA
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Senior Staff Member
Susanne Baumgartner (MA, 2008, cum laude; PhD, 2013) is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, ASCoR, at the University of Amsterdam. From 2003 till 2008 she studied Communication Science, Social Psychology and English Literature at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Before starting her Ph.D in Amsterdam, she was involved in several research projects at the University of Zurich and at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. From October 2012 till August 2013 she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at ASCoR and since September 2013 as an assistant professor.
Her research focuses on the role of digital media in adolescent development. Specifically, she is interested in media multitasking and how this affects the cognitive development of youth. Moreover, she studies the effects of smartphones on stress and sleep. To study the impact of digital media, she employs innovative methodological approaches, such as experience sampling, smartphone tracking data, and eye-trackers.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Member
- Assistant Professor in the Young Talent Program of the Department of Communication Science
- Assistant Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Suzanna J. (Sanne) Opree is an assistant professor in the Young Talent Program of the department of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses broadly on the unintended effects of the commercialized media environment on youth's psychosocial well-being. In March 2014 she obtained her doctorate with her dissertation "Consumed by Consumer Culture?". The research for this dissertation was conducted as part of the VIDI-project of Prof. dr. Moniek Buijzen "The commercialized media environment: Content, processes, and consequences for children and adolescents" (NWO funded; 2008-2014). Suzanna specializes in the development of survey instruments for children, and longitudinal data analysis. She works closely together with colleagues within and outside the Netherlands. Her work has been presented at numerous conferences and published in communication and psychology journals, and has been awarded at the international conference on Child and Teen Consumption, as well as the international conference of the International Communication Association."
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Senior Staff Member
Teun Siebers is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. In 2017, he obtained his Bachelor's degree in Psychology at Tilburg University, and in 2019, he completed the Research Master in Social and Behavioral Sciences (Social Psychology track) in Tilburg cum laude.
As part of the AWeSome team, Teun will focus on social media use among adolescents and, more specifically, how this affects and/ or is affected by self-regulation.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Senior Staff Member
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Senior Staff Member
Weiqi Tian is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. She obtained a Research Master's degree in Communication Science from the University of Amsterdam before her PhD. Her research interests are centered in the field of digital technologies and entertainment media, with a focus on understanding their psychological impacts and broader societal consequences.
In her ongoing PhD research, Weiqi is exploring the effects of mixed-reality applications (i.e., AR filters and deepfakes) on adolescents' interpersonal and systemic trust. The research follows an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from the fields of communication, educational sciences and developmental psychology, the methodology involves employing cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys along with experimental designs.