Jenny Riecke

Dr. Jenny Riecke is a Research Fellow (PostDoc) at the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at Philipps University of Marburg. She has been working in this position since September 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Rief. Her academic background includes a Diplom in Psychology from Philipps University of Marburg (2005-2011), a doctorate in Psychology (Dr. rer. nat) completed in 2014, and specialized training as a Psychological Psychotherapist.

• Diplom in Psychology, Philipps University of Marburg (2005-2011)
• Doctorate in Psychology (Dr. rer. nat), Philipps University of Marburg (2011-2014)
• Specialized training for psychological psychotherapy (2011-2017)
• Specialized training for treating PTSD patients (2016-present)
• Erasmus semester at the University of Geneva (2009-2010)

Dr. Riecke's research primarily focuses on chronic pain, particularly chronic low back pain, with emphasis on the fear-avoidance model and exposure therapy. Her work investigates how exposure treatments can reduce pain-related fear and avoidance behavior, examining the generalizability of treatment effects to new contexts. She has made significant contributions to understanding how harm and pain expectations change following exposure therapy and has developed and validated assessment tools like the Behavioral Avoidance Test for Back Pain (BAT-Back).

Her publication record demonstrates a consistent research trajectory in exposure therapy for chronic pain, with numerous publications in high-impact journals including the European Journal of Pain, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, and The Clinical Journal of Pain. Her work often involves collaborative research with institutions across Europe, including the University of Leuven, Maastricht University, and the University of Koblenz-Landau. A notable theme in her research is examining whether reductions in harm expectations following exposure therapy generalize to new contexts and movements.

Dr. Riecke is actively involved in teaching, conducting application-oriented clinical seminars since 2017 and disorder-specific seminars on chronic pain since 2018. She also serves as a lecturer for psychotherapy training in Hamburg and Hannover on topics related to chronic pain and somatoform disorders. Her clinical work includes previous positions as a therapist at the MediClin Clinic for Acute Psychosomatics and the Psychotherapy Outpatient Clinic Marburg.

She maintains extensive research collaborations with multiple institutions including the Pain-Psychotherapy-Research-Lab at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Diakonie Hospital Marburg Wehrda for multimodal pain therapy, and research groups at Maastricht University and KU Leuven focused on experimental health psychology.