Executive Committee 2008-2011 - bios

- Marc Brysbaert (RHUL - UG), President: I am a cognitive psychologist, specialized in word and number processing, although over the years I have dabbed in different research topics. In the academic year 2008-2009 I am coming back to Belgium (University of Ghent) after a stay of 7 years at Royal Holloway, University of London. I got my training and my PhD (in 1992) at the University of Leuven and worked at the University of Ghent between 1997 and 2001. I was a member of the Committee of the BAPS from 1993 till 1997 (then still called the Belgian Psychological Society) and member of the executive Committee of the Experimental Psychology Society from 2002 until 2004. Currently I am local UK officer of the European Society of Cognitive Psychology. In addition to journal articles, I published two introductory Dutch textbooks of psychology (1998 and 2006) and am currently finishing a book on Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology (co-authored with Kathy Rastle). I am action editor of Psychologica Belgica, the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, and the European Journal for Cognitive Psychology. I am also member of the editorial board of L'Annéé Psychologique; Behavior Research Methods; Bilingualism: Language and Cognition; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition; Language and Cognitive Processes; and Psicologica. It will be an honour and a pleasure to serve the BAPS
- Axel Cleeremans (ULB), Past President: Trained at Carnegie Mellon University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1991 under the supervision of Jay McClelland, Cleeremans subsequently came back to Belgium and is now a Research Director with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) and a professor of Cognitive Psychology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he heads the Consciousness, Cognition and Computation (CO3) Group. His research is essentially dedicated to the differences between information processing with and without consciousness, particularly in the domain of learning and memory. He is currently the president of the Belgian Association of Psychological Science. He is also a member of the executive committee of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and of the board of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology.
- Emmanuelle Zech (UCL), Secretary, Webmaster: After a post-doc funded by the FNRS and partially conducted at the Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida, I was appointed associate professor in 2004 at the UCL. I am conducting research on emotions, grief, and trauma. I have published a book on the psychology of bereavement (Mardaga, 2006) and articles on the efficacy of emotional expression and social support on health and emotional recovery. I am also psychotherapist having clinical consultations at the Mental Health Center in Louvain-la-Neuve. My clinical background has been in cognitive and behavioral therapy and in person-centrered psychotherapy. I have been a member of the Board of the BAPS since 2002 and initially participated to the committee of Best Poster Awards of the annual meetings, then to the selection of the Best Thesis Award as Advisor. Since 2005, I have been appointed webmaster and associate editor of Psychologica Belgica. In 2007, I co-organized the annual meeting of BAPS in Louvain-la-Neuve.
- Karl Verfaillie (KUL), Editor Psychologica Belgica: (sorry we're missing his bio data)
- Bert Reynvoet (KUL-campus Kortrijk), Treasurer: I am a cognitive psychologist working at the Department of Psychology of the KU Leuven where I am affiliated to the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. My current teaching assignments include introductory courses in (neuro)psychology at the KU Leuven Campus Kortrijk, as well as more advanced courses in the field of cognitive neuroscience in master curriculum in Leuven. In my research, the focus is on the mechanisms of subliminal priming and numerical cognition and its typical and atypical development. I've written several articles on these topics that can be found in peer-reviewed international journals. I'm very pleased to serve as a member of the EC of the BAPS. My mission statement is mainly driven by my background at other Belgian universities, as well as my interest in cognitive neuroscience. More specifically, I believe it's crucial that the BAPS can keep on playing an important role in being a (first) public forum for all (young) Belgian researchers in psychology of different fields and different universities. To attain this goal, we will have to promote the different initiatives from the BAPS (annual meeting, the association's journal…) in all fields (going from cognitive neuroscience to clinical psychology, from cognitive psychology to organizational psychology) and make our initiatives interesting for everyone.
- Alain Van Hiel (UG), Best Thesis Award & Advisor: I am an associate professor in the Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology at Ghent University. I earned my PhD at Ghent University in 2001, which was entitled "need for cognitive closure: Relationships with complexity, ambiguity, and rigidity". I teach courses on social psychology to students in Psychology, Criminology, Law, Political Science and Sociology. My current research interests include group processes, political psychology and social cognition.
- Gina Rossi (VUB), Advisor: I am a clinical psychologist working at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. I teach psychology at the Faculty of Law and Criminology, and interview and observation skills and several courses on personality psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. My research focuses on personality disorders, personality assessment, and forensic psychology. It's my honour to be board member of BAPS and to be able to serve the association I am so fond of. BAPS promotes development of high-quality empirical psychology within Belgium and contributes to the exchange of information relating to this subject between members, and between members and scientists throughout Belgium. According to me, one of the most crucial roles of BAPS is promoting the involvement of young investigators into the scientific research field and promotion of mutual scientific communication between psychologists from different domains. Important initiatives to accomplish these goals are the annual meeting, publication of manuscripts in the association's journal Psychologica Belgica, the involvement in the board of representatives of several Belgian universities, co-operation with other association within and outside Europe etc.
- Steve Majerus (ULg), Advisor: I am a research associate funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS and am working at the Center for Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Liege. I also teach at the undergraduate and graduate level at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Liege. My research interests focus on verbal short-term memory and its interactions with other cognitive systems, combining neuropsychological, cognitive, developmental and functional neuroimaging research methodologies. I also have an interest in applying the results of theoretical research to the development of neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation procedures. As a member of the BAPS, I am committed to the development of any initiatives that foster collaborations between researchers in all fields of psychology in Belgium, and to promote the best of Belgian psychological sciences in and outside Belgium. Relative to its geographical size, Belgium is quite a productive area for psychological sciences and the BAPS contributes to make this productivity known at both national and international levels.
- Cécile Colin (ULB), Advisor: I have been graduated in Psychology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1995. Then, I carried out a PhD thesis on audiovisual interactions in speech and spatial scene analysis (namely the famous McGurk and ventriloquism effects) using behavioural and neurophysiological techniques. After several years of post-doc positions, I am currently "professor assistant" at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. My main research interests are related to speech perception : audiovisual speech perception in cochlear implanted children, cued speech, development of phonological discrimination abilities, categorical perception, … I spend also part of my time in developing neurophysiological paradigms aimed at objectively assessing auditory discrimination abilities in patients (mainly young children suffering from speech learning deficits). I am involved in several tutorial classes in the field of experimental psychology for students in psychological sciences and I teach "neurophysiology of speech perception" to speech therapists students. I am very honoured to be member of the BAPS executive board, and this way, being able to promote and encourage young researchers from all fields of psychology.

Past Presidents of the BPS-BAPS have been

1972-74 De Waele (VUB)
1975-77 De Coster (UG)
1978-79 Osterrieth (ULB)
1979-81 Jean Costermans (UCL)
1981-84 Janssen (KUL)
1984-87 Paul Bertelson (ULB)
1987-90 Leni Verhofstadt (UG)
1990-93 De Keyser (ULG)
1994-96 Gery d'Ydewalle (KUL)
1996-99 Bernard Rimé (UCL)
1999-2003 Frank Van Overwalle (VUB)
2003-2005 André Vandierendonck (UG)

Executive Committee members 2005-2008

Axel Cleeremans (ULB), President
André Vandierendonck (UG), Past President
Olivier Klein (ULB), Secretary
Karl Verfaillie (KUL), Editor Psychologica Belgica
Tom Beckers (KUL), Treasurer
Alain Van Hiel (UG), Best Thesis Award & Advisor
Gina Rossi (VUB), Advisor
Michel Hansenne (ULg), Advisor, mailing list, Best Poster Awards
Emmanuelle Zech (UCL), Advisor, Webmaster

Membership comes with a free subscription to Psychologica Belgica. Membership of BAPS also offers sizeable reductions for subscriptions to the journals of the American Psychological Association, to the Annual Review of Psychology, as well as to several popular Psychology magazines in Dutch and French. Members are also regularly informed about meetings, lectures, symposia, training cycles, and of course, they benefit from reduced participation fees to all these activities. For instance, this year the fee has been reduced to 30 EUR for members.

There are three types of membership in BAPS:

• Full members must have a diploma of licentiate or doctor in the Psychological Sciences (1) delivered by a Belgian university or (2) delivered by a university from the European Union and recognized by the Belgian Commission of Psychologists.
• Affiliate members are people whose main occupation is within the field of psychology and who fulfill one of the following conditions: (1) they reside in Belgium but do not hold a licentiate or doctoral degree in the Psychological Sciences, as requested of full members, or (2) they reside permanently outside Belgium.
• Student members are necessarily enrolled in the last year of a Belgian university programme in the Psychological Sciences.

Affiliate Members and Student Members have the same rights as Full Members, except when voting for amendments to the articles of the Association and for electing members of the executive committee.

To become a member and for more information concerning payment of fees, please contact our Treasurer, Bert Reynvoet (BertdotReynvoetatkuleuven-kortrijkdotbe).