How can sustainable online relationships between different parties (e.g. organizations and consumers) be created and developed via computer-mediated communication such as social media and conversational agents? To study my main interest, I take a corporate point of view and focus on message characteristics (language and content use) in online settings. On the one hand, I focus on aspects of monitoring and interpreting online word-of-mouth (WOM) messages. On the other hand I aim to gain more insight into effective (proactive) organizational strategies and language use to initiate online conversations and to distinguish effective (reactive) response strategies to WOM messages (i.e., webcare). Furthere, I explore the possibilities of automated (organizational) messages by means of conversational agents (chatbots) to different target groups in various contexts (i.e., customer service, politics, health and welfare). Data of (large) corpora are combined with experimental studies in order to investigate the effects and related influential factors of linguistic and content elements via these CMC channels.

Recent research projects

Smooth Operator. Development and effects of personalized conversational AI. Co-granted by NWO.

Een sensitieve virtuele assistent voor kwetsbare zorgvragers. Granted by Health~Holland and ZonMw.

In het oog van de orkaan: Strategisch communiceren voor en tijdens een issuestorm. Granted by Logeion.

Stemmen dankzij Steffie. Hoe AI-avatar Steffie kwetsbare mensen helpt bij hun stemkeuze. Granted by RVO SBIR grant Nieuwe technologieen 'Inclusie en leven lang leren'.

2016-present: Assistant Professor Language, Business Communication & Digital Media, Tilburg University, Department of Communication and Information Sciences, Tilburg center for Cognition and Communication (TiCC).

2020-present: Editor in chief Tekstblad.

2010-present: Freelance creative writer, communications advisor and blogger.

Previous

2015-2016: Thesis supervisor, Communication & Information Sciences, VU University Amsterdam.

2014-2016: Lecturer and researcher Corporate Communication, Communication Science, University of Amsterdam.

2010-2015: PhD candidate, Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen.

2007-2014: Part time lecturer at the BA & MA programmes Dutch Language and Culture and Communication & Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen.

2009-2010: Professional/creative writer and communications advisor, Gloed Communicatie (formerly HDtt Communicatieadvies), Nijmegen.

For the track Business Communication and Digital Media (BDM), I lecture about online business communication, with a strong focus on content and language characteristics in messages.

Click here for my courses.