Dr. Nathalie Hoekstra
Postdoc at the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University.
Postdoc representative of the Assistant Professor and Postdoc Platform, BSI
Who is Nathalie?
What is your career path?
Nathalie: I handed in my PhD dissertation on July 31st (2024) and started the current postdoc on August 15th (2024), so I had like two weeks of a break. I had my defense in February of this year (2025). My current contract will be until December, so it was only 16 months. And I'm very lucky that I can stay in my department because there's a colleague who has an ERC grant and she asked me, “Hey, do you want to be a postdoc on my project?” I really like her and her project, so I said yes. So, from January onwards, I will start as a postdoc on her project, and that will be until summer of 2028.
What topics are you working on?
Nathalie: My PhD was about how teachers can manage the social dynamics and support victims of bullying in elementary school classrooms. And my current postdoc is about peer relationships in emerging adulthood, between 18 and 25 years old. What do their peer relationships look like? How do the peer relationships affect their well-being or life satisfaction? And my next postdoc will be about popularity and bullying and how they go together, again in elementary schools. So, in general, social relationships, bullying, teachers, students…
What does your own initiative about postdocs look like?
Nathalie: It’s from the Assistant Professor and Postdoc platform (APP) at the Behavioural Science Institute, RU, where I'm the only postdoc member, while all of the others are assistant professors. We felt that the platform could do more for postdocs, so we started with a questionnaire to get a good overview of how BSI postdocs are doing. What are they encountering? What could the APP or the BSI director do for them?We're going to summarize the inputs from the questionnaire, and we are considering writing a letter to the BSI directorate, so hopefully the directorate can address those points.
Natalie’s Portrait of Postdocs
What does postdoc mean to you?
Nathalie: To me, postdocs are research-oriented jobs that are usually with short contracts. They give you the opportunity and time to dive into research topics and improve your skills before you move on to assistant professor positions, where you have a lot of responsibilities regarding teaching, management, and so on.
How does your postdoc differ from your PhD?
Nathalie: The biggest difference is that I had 10% of teaching during my PhD, but the postdoc contract in itself doesn't contain teaching. It's just research, although I will combine with a teaching contract in my next postdoc.
Another big difference is that the PhD is really a learning process with an end and that you have to prove that you are capable of receiving the doctor title. As a postdoc, I feel that I've shown my capabilities, and I feel like a researcher who's capable of doing research work.
How did you come to the ideas about postdocs?
Nathalie: I've heard from other people. For example, my PhD supervisor said that a postdoc gives you time to dive deeper into things and to improve before you go on to the hectic life of an assistant professor. And personally, because I don't have teaching, I feel that there's room for learning a new method or exploring new topics.
And if I have experience as a postdoc, it will look good on my CV and help me obtain an assistant professor position, a nice stepping stone to the next phase. I've already applied for assistant professor positions, but I was second or they didn't pick me because there was always someone who was a bit further in the process and who had more years of experience with research. I felt like, if I want to have more of a chance, I should obtain more research experience in a postdoc and then try again.
I also hear that a lot of people choose a postdoc rather than an assistant professor because they don't like teaching. They say like “okay, I'm going to do five postdocs because I want to do research and no teaching.”
What would (not) fall under postdocs’ responsibility?
Nathalie: I think grant application is a responsibility of a postdoc, a big part of it. But it also depends on the contract. It's not like a standard part of the job, but more like if you want to stay in academia, you have to have funding. My current contract was so short, so I felt there was no room for me to write grant proposals. The other main tasks of a postdoc are doing research, publishing articles, and working on studies.
I think teaching shouldn't be a responsibility. And you can do management things, like I'm in the APP and I'm part of the BSI research-in-schools community, because I like to. It's an add-on but not mandatory. If you make it mandatory for each postdoc to do management stuff, then it adds on the workload. Now I just really want to, and I think that's better, then it's nice if my supervisor appreciates and recognizes it.
Postdocs’ roles in teaching and mentoring?
Nathalie: I like teaching and I think it's important to contribute to the teaching institute. I heard that the teachers in our department are very busy, so I want to help them out. I think it's also good for my CV to have many years of teaching experience.
I do like to develop myself in mentoring, but it shouldn't be mandatory. For my next postdoc, my colleague asked me, “Do you also want to be involved in the supervision of the PhD?”, and I said, “oh, yes, I would really like that”. I can develop that skill and it will help me later on in my career.
In general, I think postdocs should be offered the opportunity, but they should decide for themselves whether they want to take the opportunity. If we make all these things mandatory, then they're just doing assistant professor tasks, but being paid as postdocs. I think that's not desirable.
Postdocs’ roles in management and collaboration?
Nathalie: I'm in the APP and in the BSI research-in-schools community, also because I like to be connected to other researchers in BSI. And I think it's important that someone does it: If I was not in the APP, there would be no postdoc. But I think that everyone should decide for themselves and it shouldn't be mandatory for a postdoc.
And for initiating collaboration, I think it depends on whether it will help your work. Because for some of the topics that I'm working on, there are experts out there, then it's very valuable to connect and work together with them. But if you are doing something very specific that is very different from what other people have done before, then it may be less valuable. I think you should seek collaboration if there is a benefit to it, but you shouldn't seek collaboration just to seek collaboration.
I think it also depends a little bit on the supervisors. Sometimes your supervisor introduces you to someone, or they have a collaboration with someone and they put you in contact with that person. And it’s also dependent on the opportunities that you have. Like, if there was no budget for me to go to the conference, then I couldn't collaborate on a symposium.
Postdocs’ roles in connecting with industry and marketing research?
Nathalie: My research has a clear link with practice. So during my PhD, I wrote three professional articles for teacher journals. I personally think this is very important, because if we keep all the knowledge that we obtain in academia, then why are we doing it?
Postdocs’ roles in their own career development?
Nathalie: I would like to become an assistant professor after my second postdoc. And I think it's important that I gain experience with tasks that assistant professors should do. That's why I'm going to take on a teaching contract next to the second postdoc. I think I will also start thinking about a VENI and ask my supervisor for some support, and maybe talk to other people, like assistant professors. I will just do my best to develop those skills during the postdoc, so that when I'm finished with the postdoc, I can apply for an assistant professor position and make sure that I tick the boxes that they're looking for.
Support in career development
Do you feel that you are well supported in your career development?
Nathalie: My supervisors are all very supportive. Also, like the PI who asked me to be involved in supervising the PhD, I think she asked that because she knows that's a skill I have to develop for my career development.
But career development is not like something that supervisors address on a daily basis, but more like for every now and then. I think sometimes it gets forgotten a bit in daily life. If I look back at the last year, my supervisor was a bit worried for my future. Where can you go after this postdoc? Do I still have money and can we find out a place for you to work? But he didn't specifically address career development. He did think along about grant application opportunities and proposed a few that I could look into.
Is there support from your organization for career development?
Nathalie: Maybe there are also postdoc courses in the university, but I'm not sure. And I think I can always knock on the door of a colleague and ask. They're all very open to help.
Is there support for career development beyond academia?
Nathalie: When I approached the end of my PhD, I was applying for assistant professor, but it was a bit hard with the budget cut. I thought, maybe I should look into opportunities outside academia, but I don't know so much what I like outside academia. Then I followed a course on career paths, a one-day course on how to decide what you want. The conclusion was always that working in academia is nicer than the other options. That's why I always got back, “maybe I belong in academia”. The course was offered by a conference on developmental psychology in the Netherlands.
I also talked to my daily supervisor during the PhD about my considerations. Just talking to her was helpful. Then she shared her experiences and gave me some directions to look into. She also talked to me about people who were in practice.
I also tried to collect information myself as well. For example, I know someone who works at the Inspectorate of Education. And I emailed her to ask: Hey, do you like your job and what does it entail? And why did you chose to work there? Why did you decide to go out and work there?
Is the postdoc position attractive to early career researchers?
Nathalie: I experience the postdoc generally positive, very positive.
After I had my PhD defense in February, I started to feel more competent, because I knew I have proven that I'm capable. That helped feel more self-confident and more relaxed. I get to focus on writing my postdoc papers, becoming a better researcher, and diving into things. The postdoc just gave me more room and opportunities for growth, like getting asked to be involved in supervising a PhD. And my department is really great. We have a very supportive group of colleagues. Everyone's always open to helping each other or giving advice. I really feel at home in my department.
I would definitely recommend people to do a postdoc after their PhD. It really provides you with the opportunity and the time to do research and to develop your research skills before you climb higher up the academic ladder and get too busy to do other things.
However, I would warn those people for the short contracts, because I really don't like that about the postdocs. It brings along a lot of insecurity about being employed. Because you have to pay your mortgage or your rent. When I knew my contract is ending in December, I was already a bit stressed from May onwards. If you are employed a bit longer, then that's nicer for your stress levels.
Also for the research, I think it would be better if postdocs are a bit longer. Now constrained by the length, you can only do a phase of a research or like a part of it. It's now like one paper done, two papers done. But if my contract was a bit longer, then I could maybe do a third paper or I could make the papers more in-depth, or there would be more time for other things like career development or valorization and management tasks.
I think my ideal post-doc would be when there's like a framework for a project, and some ideas and a topic. And you get hired for two, two and a half, or maybe three years. I also like the collaborative part, in a small team, so you can brainstorm with each other. It’s also nice that as a postdoc that you are also more involved in guidance or thinking along with PhDs.
What can be done to improve?
Nathalie: There's nothing I can think of that would make it better, because I already like my circumstances now. Oh, yeah, maybe a bit more guidance in things like grant application or career development, like you mentioned. If there is a person within BSI, for example, who could help you with that. That would be nice.