Research & teaching interests

Virtual Reality is an amazing new medium with the potential to change the ways we tell, make, share and experience stories. It allows you to step inside a storyworld, look around where you, interact with the characters and objects and even reach out, touch and feel them. VR does not merely create storyworlds but offers storyrealities.

How is it possible to create and tell stories in such a unique immersive, participatory and transparent medium? A uniqueness that gives a much more central role to both the physical and virtual body of the VR viewer, such a/gamer in the process of storytelling.

My research centers around the question how we can tell stories in VR through mind and body.

We know how to write engaging stories on paper and how to tell them on screen but how do you get and keep your audience engaged in VR?

To help find an answer to this question I am exploring the possibilities and challenges of building suspense in VR. In films, books, tv-series and games, suspense is a powerfull tool to draw audiences into a storyworld, keep them hooked and spend time and money. I am interested to see how it is possible to build suspense in VR by engaging the body and mind of the viewer/ gamer.  To what extend are old strategies of building suspense from books, films and games used in VR. But foremost what new ways of building suspense are VR storytellers finding and where can yet unexplored possibilities for suspense perhaps be found.

I’ve always had a thing for storytelling and technology. As a little girl I devoured stories in all kinds, shapes and sizes, watching them on tv and the cinema, reading them in books and comics, exploring them in games, listening to them (yes old enough, also on music cassettes and vinyl).

As marketeer in the games industry I have created some amazing stories for consumers and worked with wonderful brands. As a teacher I enjoy giving students the tools and knowledge they need to become successful professionals and create some amazing stories of their own.

I currently teach marketing and branding classes to aspiring young professionals in Leiden helping them getting to grips with marketing and branding basics and develop a curiosity of new developments in these dynamic fields. I hope to inspire students to get our of their comfortzone, think critically and make use of their techsavvyness.

Areas I love learning about: new media and branding/ marketing, neuroscience and brands, creative brand activation, purposeful marketing and branding.