Ivy Defoe (PhD) is a developmental scientist who works as a tenured assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, an incoming Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at Masaryk University. She also holds an appointment as an editorial fellow at the journal Psychological Bulletin.

In November 2016, she completed her PhD (Cum Laude) in Developmental Psychology at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), with PhD internships via a Fulbright scholarship at the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab (Harvard University) and at the Institute of Criminology (University of Cambridge).

After her PhD, she accepted a fellowship to conduct post-doctoral research at The Annenberg Public Policy Center (University of Pennsylvania; the USA) and thereafter embarked on a second post-doctoral research position at the Department of Psychology of Conflict, Risk and Safety (University of Twente; The Netherlands).

One of her current research interests is theory development. An example is the Developmental Neuro-Ecological Risk-taking Model (DNERM) that she recently developed (Defoe, 2021 in Developmental Review). DNERM is a criminological-psychological model on youth risk behavior (e.g., substance use, delinquency), inspired by findings of a meta-analysis she led (see: Defoe, et al., 2015 in Psychological Bulletin). DNERM explains how multiple aspects of the environment (i.e., cultural, online, physical & social) predict the development of maladaptive risk-taking during the youth period. Interest in this theory has for example led to her being invited to media interviews (e.g., by BBC News) and talks at universities (e.g., Cornell University; University of Cambridge).

She is experienced in longitudinal, experimental and meta-analytic methodologies. Her interdisciplinary research using these methodologies has been published in Psychology, Criminology, Health and Psychiatry journals such as: Psychological Bulletin (Defoe et al., 2015), Journal of Criminal Justice (Defoe et al., 2013), Addiction (Defoe et al., 2019), and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (Defoe, et al., 2023). These publications have received numerous citations (e.g., > 1000 citations on first-author publications that she led).

At IRTIS, Ivy will for example be involved in the DigiWell project, which will provide a unique infrastructure to stringently test important hypotheses on how the online world is intertwined with the offline “real-world”—one of the main hypotheses in her above-mentioned DNERM theory.

To follow her research and learn more about it, you could consider connecting with her on LinkedIn where she frequently posts updates: www.linkedin/ivy-n-defoe and/or visit her website: www.ivyndefoe.com.