Media Prof and Director

My official job title is full professor of Communication and Media in the Department of Media & Communication (Erasmus University Rotterdam). In September 2019, I was appointed as the Academic Director of CLI, Erasmus University’s Community for Learning and Innovation, which means that I have two jobs now. As a professor I am a member of the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication, and Culture, the (national) Research School for Media Studies (rMES) and NeSCoR (Netherlands School of Communication Research) and NeFCA (Netherlands Flanders Communication Association. I received my MA (1985) and PhD (1991) in psychology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Before coming to Erasmus University in 2009, I worked at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR, UvA) and the psychology department of Leiden University.

Participating audiences2.1

My research takes the ubiquity of the Internet as a starting point and aims to understand and explain the changing relations between media consumers and media producers in contemporary participatory culture. The project builds upon my earlier research on interactive entertainment media, in particular video- and computer games. Recently, the studies investigate different kinds of UGC (User Generated Content), that is, the content people purposely publish online, the persuasive properties of (online) games, and the emotional impact of different media, including traditional ones. See Current Research for the details.

Amsterdam, Leiden, and administration

Administration and management have always been part of my academic positions. In September 2019, I was appointed as the Academic Director of the Community for Learning and Innovation (CLI). Before that I served as the Director of Education in the management team of ESHCC (Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication) and the Secretary of the Department of Media & Communication. Another recent managerial duty is the Presidency of NeFCA, the Netherlands Flanders Communication Association (until 2020). At ASCoR (UvA) I was the director of the Center for Popular Culture and Chair of the Media Entertainment group. I co-founded the Special Interest Group Game Studies in the International Communication Association and the Dutch chapter of the Digital Games Research Association. I serve and have served on the editorial board of several journals, including Media Psychology, Games & Culture, The Journal for Media Psychology, Theory & Psychology, and P&M. Outside academia, I am the president of the Dutch Scientific Council of Media Literacy, founded in December 2018. I am also a member of the Advisory Board of ‘Kijkwijzer’ (the Dutch rating system for audio-visual productions). In the EU gaming project PEGI (Pan European Game Information), I am member of the Experts Board and Chairman of the Complaints Board.