Sanne de Wit obtained her PhD degree at the University of Cambridge under supervision of Prof. Anthony Dickinson on animal models of the associative learning mechanisms that underlie habit and goal-directed action. Next, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute in Cambridge in the group of Prof. Paul Fletcher, to translate animal paradigms to controlled paradigms for the investigation of goal-directed versus habitual action control in humans – and the neural underpinnings. During that time, she also started to collaborate with clinical experts to investigate action control in psychopathologies. She then moved to the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Richard Ridderinkhof’s lab. Currently, she is Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology at UvA. Increasingly, her research is focused on real-world investigation of habits, and bridging the gap between fundamental insights from experimental research to real-world applications to, e.g., health-related routines (e.g., medication adherence, oral hygiene), physical activity, smartphone use, resilience/personal goal pursuit, and pro-environmental behaviour.
Career
Since 2014: Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2011–2014: Assistant professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2008–2011: Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Developmental Psychology and at the Cognitive Science Center (CSCA), University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (in Prof. Ridderinkhof’s Lab)
Since 2008: Honorary Member of the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge , UK
2006–2008: Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge , UK (in Prof. Fletcher’s Lab)
2007: Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute (part-time),University of Cambridge , UK (in Dr. Cools’ Lab)
Education
2002–2006: Ph.D. at the Department of Experimental Psychology , University of Cambridge , UK. Sponsored by scholarship of Merck, Sharp & Dohme. PhD Supervisor: Prof. Anthony Dickinson.
Research topic: Associative and Neural Mechanisms Mediating Habit Strategies to Resolve Goal-Related Response Conflict in Animals and Humans
2005: Visiting Researcher at the Department of Psychology, University of California , USA (in Prof. Balleine’s lab)
1997–2002: Master degree in Biological Psychology , University of Nijmegen , The Netherlands
During my study I conducted research internships at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique , France , and at the University of Cambridge, UK. Next to my study, I worked as a student assistant at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.