Nienke Jonker

Dr. Nienke Jonker is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen's Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, affiliated with the Clinical Psychology & Experimental Psychopathology department. She holds a Research Master’s in Behavioral & Social Sciences (cum laude) and a PhD in Psychology. Her research focuses on understanding mechanisms underlying disordered eating behaviors, particularly obesity and anorexia nervosa, with an emphasis on reward/punishment sensitivity and their implications for intervention design. Key projects include NWO-funded studies on food attention biases and emotion regulation.

Education: BSc Nutrition & Dietetics (Hanze UAS), BSc Psychology (U Groningen), MSc Research in Behavioral & Social Sciences (U Groningen). PhD (2014-2018) investigated mechanisms linking reward sensitivity to disordered eating, followed by a postdoc (2019) on satiety-related food attention biases.

Research interests include cognitive biases, hunger's emotional impact, and translational interventions. Key grants include NWO Talent (2014) and Replication (2018) awards. She supervises PhD students Mégane Ackermans and Fleur Boonstra.

Labs/Teams: Member of Dutch-Flemish EPP Postgraduate School, Association for Cognitive Bias Modification. Her work bridges basic science and clinical applications, particularly in developing attention-training interventions for disordered eating.