Research Software Engineer

Dr. Thijs Vroegh

Thijs Vroegh obtained his PhD in Musicology from the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and the Max Planck Institute for empirical aesthetics in 2018. His PhD focused on the relation between music-induced states of absorption and its relation to aesthetic appreciation. After his PhD, Thijs worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the same institute where he focused on related music-induced experiences such as flow and mind wandering, visual imagery, and the relation between music listening and hypnosis. In particular, Thijs used psychometric network analysis, Bayesian networks and NLP to model and understand the distinct psychological mechanisms underlying the subtle shifts that can occur in one’s subjective states of consciousness. 

Before that, Thijs worked in a variety of industries, including educational research, biometrics, and fast moving consumer goods. Each time, data handling and analytics was a main component in his activities. Besides work, he likes to climb/boulder, listen to music and explore new musical genres, and making family day trips.  

Thijs joined the Netherlands eScience Center as a Research Software Engineer in the Social Sciences & Humanities Section in February 2023 and is currently involved in projects centered on temporal social network analysis and statistical path modeling.