After completing a BSc in Neuro and Rehabilitation Psychology (2004) and an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience (2006) at the Radboud University Nijmegen, I carried out a PhD in Psychiatry at the University of Utrecht (2011; Cum Laude) with Professors René Kahn, Iris Sommer and Dr Sebastiaan Neggers. In 2012, I received a Niels Stensen postdoctoral Stipend and joined the group of Professor Wolfram Schultz at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. In 2015, I moved to the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge to work as a Research Associate in the group of Professor Paul Fletcher.  

In 2018, I joined the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London, where I am Senior Lecturer in Psychosis Studies.  In 2019, I received recognition as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  

Research Interests

• Can alterations in learning and decision-making predict mental health outcomes? We use cross-sectional and longitudinal online testing to disentangle deficits in learning and decision-making that are uniquely related to specific sub-clinical and clinical psychiatric symptoms and illnesses (disease-specific), and those that are shared across symptoms and illnesses (transdiagnostic).  
• Refined brain biomarkers of mental illness. We use novel advances in brain imaging to identity whether refined measures of brain anatomy including layer-specific thickness, and intrinsic curvature provide sensitive markers of mental symptoms and illnesses.  
• Examining the contributions of expectation and sensory perception on the neural processing of rewards (collaboration with University of Cambridge). The sensory components of rewards enable the identification and subsequent ascription of value to rewards. We are investigating how our prior expectations can influence the detection, identification and valuation of received rewards.  

Expertise and Public Engagement

I regularly take part in science fairs, sit on discussion panels, tweet about research and give interviews, e.g.,http://www.psychiatrycpd.co.uk/podcasts/diederenpeoplewhohearvoic.aspx 

I contributed to the movie Correspondence O by Ilona Sagar which won the Research in Film Awards 2018.  

Together with three colleagues, I developed an outreach scheme into secondary schools (https://www.hughes.cam.ac.uk/about-us/research-translation/ilab/)