Donna Meyer
PhD candidate
Research Interests
During my studies, I learned about the importance of bridging the gap between basic science and clinical practice and developed a strong interest in translational research. I am particularly interested in the conditions under which emotional episodic memories change over time, and how these conditions can be optimized in order to improve psychological treatments for emotional memory disorders. In my PhD project, I aim to investigate how contextual (dis)similarity between past aversive events and novel therapeutic experiences can modulate (mal)adaptive emotional responses through memory (dis)integration, under the supervision of Dr. Vanessa van Ast and Prof. Dr. Merel Kindt.
Background
After obtaining my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) with a specialization in Clinical Psychology (2020, cum laude), I completed the Research Master’s in Psychology at the UvA, with a major in Clinical Psychology and a minor in Psychological Methods (2022, cum laude). For my thesis project, I examined the impact of childhood trauma on the patient-physician relationship in adults with chronic pain during a 7-month research internship at the Meander Medical Centre in Amersfoort. Following this project, I gained clinical experience during a 7-month clinical internship at PsyQ in Amsterdam, where I worked with patients suffering from a wide range of emotional disorders. Throughout my Master’s, I worked as a research assistant in the Amsterdam Emotional Memory Lab and as a clinical research coordinator at the Clinical Psychology department of the UvA.