Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg

Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg (born 19 June 1965) is a Dutch psychologist focused attachment and emotion regulation in parents and their children, with special emphasis on the neurobiological processes involved in parenting and development. She is currently a Full Professor at Ispa-Instituto Universitário (Portugal), a visiting Scholar & Research Associate in the Center for Attachment Research at The New School for Social Research (New York), and a visiting Consultant at the National Institute of Education of the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

She examined the underlying mechanisms of adults’ caregiving responses, using an experimental design with cry sounds as well as a life-like crying baby doll. With her team, she documented the effects of oxytocin administration on neural and behavioral responses to infant crying and infant laughter. She has served as a PI on nationally funded grants that examined parenting and child development, and on a research project examining neurobiological factors involved in fathers’ parenting, funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council. As part of this research project, they conducted a series of randomised controlled trials to test the effects of two pharmacological interventions (oxytocin and vasopressin) and two behavioral interventions (prenatal video feedback using ultrasound, and postnatal use of a soft infant carrier) on hormonal, neural, and behavioral functioning in first-time fathers.

From 1993 until 2022 she was professor at Leiden University (Netherlands) where she worked at the Centre for Child and Family Studies, having also worked at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands) and held a position as a Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK).

Career
Bakermans-Kranenburg was born in Alphen aan den Rijn. She earned a master's degree in Education at Leiden University in 1989. Four years later she earned a PhD under the supervision of Dr. Marinus van IJzendoorn, with a thesis titled ''Het gehechtheidsbiografisch interview. Betrouwbaarheid en discriminante validiteit'' ('The Adult Attachment Interview: Psychometric analysis'). Bakermans-Kranenburg stayed at Leiden University and started working at the Centre for Child and Family Studies, where she was an assistant professor until 2004. She was associate professor for another three years before being appointed as full professor in September 2007.

In 2004 Bakermans-Kranenburg earned a VIDI award by the Dutch Research Council, a grant for outstanding young researchers who are among the top 10-20% of their peer group. In 2009 earned a Vici award by the same organization (Dutch Research Council), a grant for outstanding senior researchers who have shown that they have the ability successfully to develop their own innovative lines of research and to act as coaches for young researchers.

In 2005, Bakermans-Kranenburg received the Bowlby-Ainsworth Award 2005 from the New York Attachment Consortium & The Center for Mental Health Promotion, this Award recognizes founders and singular contributors to the Bowlby-Ainsworth tradition of attachment theory and research. In 2012 Bakermans-Kranenburg became an Elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2015 Bakermans-Kranenburg received a European Research Council Advanced Grant to be spent on research improving the sensitivity of fathers to their newborn children.

In addition, Bakermans-Kranenburg is an ISI Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 placing her in the top 1% most cited scientists in the psychology-psychiatry world over 2004–2021.

On 2 June 2017 Bakermans-Kranenburg received an honorary doctorate at Lund University in Sweden. The Faculty of Social Sciences cited her contribution to developmental psychology as both deep and broad.