PhD student HSRI: Manon Enting

Can you tell us something about you?

My name is Manon Enting and I work since February 2022 as a PhD candidate on the HSRI project Life after Trauma. My PhD research focuses on the quality of life of persons who survived traumatic injury. Surviving injury can have a large impact on one’s daily life and it is therefore important to not only study physical recovery, but also the psychological and social aspects. We study this from a person-specific approach, as we believe that recovery experiences can differ largely across individuals. Better insights into these individual differences can be a first step towards personalizing aftercare for trauma patients.

Did cross-departmental research play a role during your bachelor’s/master’s studies? To which extent?

Yes, both during my Bachelor’s program and Research Master. I completed a Bachelor in Psychology, which is a broad study with multiple departments involved. Within this program, I did a major in developmental psychology and a minor in methodology and statistics. I experienced the added value of interdisciplinary research when I wrote my Bachelor’s thesis on developmental changes using advanced statistical analyses. Cross-departmental research also played a role during my interdisciplinary Research Master’s program in Psychology: Individual Differences and Assessment. Within this program, I had the possibility to personalize the curriculum (e.g. research projects, electives, traineeships, etc.) based on my own research interests.

What excited you about this multidisciplinary project you applied for?

I was excited about the innovative research methods (e.g. experience sampling method) that we use to capture the unique recovery processes of persons who survived injury. I really believe that this approach will help us better understand why some individuals recover better than others. I also liked the societal relevance of the project and the possibility to conduct this research at both Tilburg University and the ETZ hospital in Tilburg.

Why is cross-departmental research important for your PhD project? What does it add to the project?

The topic of my PhD project is very broad, as trauma patients report a wide range of complaints as a result of their injury. It is therefore important to study this topic from different perspectives. Moreover, lots of interesting research on recovery experiences has been conducted across different disciplines (e.g. medicine, nursing science, rehabilitation science) and I believe that we can learn a lot when we integrate this knowledge.