Rakoen Maertens

My work centres around three topics:

• Social Influence & Misinformation: how can we use the insights of social psychology to understand and tackle the influence of misleading information.

• Psychometrics & Impact Evaluation: how can we effectively measure psychological constructs (incl. AI-based methods), and how can we improve the methodological frameworks to talk about impactful psychological interventions.
  

• Applied Behavioural Science & Nudging: how can we transform behavioural science into practical solutions, policy, and product design.

Before starting my Junior Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford (New College), I finished my PhD on ”The Long-Term Effectiveness of Inoculation Against Misinformation" at the University of Cambridge, for which I won the CSAR Award for Applied Research. Back in Belgium I finished my BSc and MSc (summa cum laude) in Experimental Psychology at Ghent University, where I received the Best Master Dissertation of Belgium award by the Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences and Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium.

This year I am lecturing and tutoring for the Social Psychology course at the Department, with a focus on the following topics:

1. Personality, Social Influence, and Norms

2. Misinformation & Influence and Persuasion in the Digital Age

3. Nudging & Applied Behavioural Insights