Maaike Jappens is a postdoctoral researcher at the at the Department of Sociology and the TOR Research Group. She obtained a Master's Degree in Sociology and a Master’s Degree in Family and Sexuality Studies at the University of Leuven. In 2008, she started her research career at the Sociology department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Within the research group Interface Demography, she participated in the large scale research projects ‘Divorce in Flanders’ and ‘Families in Transition, Transition in Families’. Her research focused on the often overlooked relationship between grandparents and grandchildren and particularly the role of grandparenthood in divorced families.
In 2020 she started working at the TOR group, where she is currently the senior researcher coordinating the project ‘Socializing inequality’. This project explores when in their socio-cognitive development young children first become aware of inequalities in social status and how this awareness shapes the way they come to perceive and judge the social world.
Link to my publications: https://cris.vub.be/en/persons/maaike-jappens(890d7e2d-92ef-409b-8071-03e213e7fe2a)/publications.html.