Maarten van Zalk

Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology, Örebro University and Utrecht University

Maarten van Zalk received his Ph.D. with honours in Psychology at Utrecht University in 2009. He was
appointed Associate Professor at Örebro University in 2010 and at Utrecht University in 2012. His research
concerns social relationships, personality and problematic development during teenage years. He has
specialized in advanced quantitative methodologies, such as structural equation modelling and social network
analyses. Since 2010, he has been the Swedish coordinator of the European Collaborative Research Project
entitled ‘Social Influence in Dynamic Networks’. His past and current positions and fellowships include the
following: Visiting Scholar at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and at Sidney Sussex College, University
of Cambridge; Associate Professor at Masaryk University, Brno; Marie Curie Fellow at Örebro University;
and co-editor of a 2013 Journal of Research on Adolescence special issue on social network analyses
entitled ‘Network–Behavior Dynamics’.

Maarten van Zalk has as a main author published in leading international psychology journals. Key
publications include ‘In the Eye of the Beholder: Perceived, Actual, and Peer-rated Similarity in Personality,
Communication, and Friendship Intensity during the Acquaintanceship Process’, in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology
(2009). Another example is ‘It Takes Three: Selection, Influence, and
De-selection Processes of Depression in Adolescent Peer Networks’, in the journal Developmental
Psychology
(2010). He has received a series of prizes and awards for his published work, including the 2010
Young Scholar Award by the European Association for Research on Adolescence.

During his time at SCAS, he plans to continue his work on problematic personality and antisocial behaviour
during teenage years. He aims to extend this earlier work by focusing on the processes that explain how
problematic personality traits influence crime and violence. He will study teenagers’ social interactions
with parents and peers and their hormonal processes to elucidate how personality traits affect delinquent
and aggressive behaviour.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2015-16.