Dr. Marcel Van Aken

Biography

Marcel A.G. van Aken studied developmental psychology and defended his PhD thesis at the University of Nijmegen in 1991, focusing on a longitudinal study on developmental competence. He accepted a post-doctoral position at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research in Munich, Germany, in 1990, where he worked in the Division of Developmental Psychology under the direction of Professor Weinert, primarily on the LOGIC study, a multidomain longitudinal study on the development of individual competencies. He returned to the Netherlands in 1993 and spent years as an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Nijmegen before moving to Utrecht University in 2001. By 2003, he became a full professor in the Department of Developmental Psychology at Utrecht University. His research focuses on personality development in children, adolescents, and young adults, particularly on the transactional relations between personality characteristics and elements of social relationships, including parents and peers, and their outcomes in terms of competence and maladaptive personality pathology. He has published numerous articles on social personality development and has been involved with international organizations and review committees. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development and received the ISSBD Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Research and Theory in Behavioral Development in 2018. He has also been involved with the International Journal of Behavioral Development, serving as associate editor from 1998 to 2002 and as editor from 2008 to 2014. Recently, he was the president of the European Association for Developmental Psychology from 2019 to 2021 and served as the Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Utrecht University from 2017 to 2023.

Research Interests