Maja Dekovic (1961), developmental psychologist, received her PhD in 1991 at Radboud University Nijmegen. In 1998 she was appointed full professor at University of Amsterdam. Since 2004 she works as full professor, and department chair, at the department of Clinical Child and Family Studies.

Research

She is leader of the Utrecht Centre for Child and Adolescent Studies (CAS), an interdisciplinary research programme that aims to explain how individual characteristics, proximal social relationships, and the wider social and cultural context shape developmental trajectories, with the ultimate aim to improve preventive and/or interventions to help children and families optimally develop. CAS is one of the key players in Utrecht University strategic theme Dynamics of Youth.

Her research interests include children and adolescent normative and deviant development, parent-child relationships, family interaction and effects of family-based interventions. She has extensive expertise (both substantive and methodological) in this field, was project leader of 15 big scale projects, and has several hundred (inter)national publications. She was/is (co) leader of several effectiveness studies (Home-Start, Multisystemic Therapy, Parents of troublesome youth, Intensive Home Visiting Program, Alles Kidzzz, Family Conferencing, Rock and Water). She is one of the PIs in the NWO Gravitation programme, Consortium of Individual Development (CID), with a 10 year long financing of national collaboration between researchers from different discipline based at four Dutch universities. In addition, she is a member of several (inter)national research committees, and editorial boards on (inter)national journals.

(https://www.uu.nl/staff/mdekovic)