Marleen T. Adema
Dutch Association for Behavior Analysis
Dr. Marleen Adema was a lone behaviorist as a master's student in linguistics (specialisation: language development) at the University of Amsterdam. She was told that behavior analysis was dead, and was delighted to discover that it wasn't. She studied the Chomsky-Skinner "debate" and, for her thesis, she compared radical behaviorism with connectionism. After her master's, in 1999, Marleen struggled to find a Ph.D. project in the Netherlands. So she worked in a bookstore, as a secretary and an editor, while pursuing her scientific interests by reading, writing, and attending behavior analytic conferences. At one conference, she met Prof. Lowe, Dr. Horne, and Dr. Hughes from Bangor University. She moved to Bangor to take an MSc course in psychological research, with partial funding. Then she received the best news ever: she would get a Ph.D. studentship, and a Bijou Fellowship Award. Marleen conducted verbal behavior research, and obtained her Ph.D. and an applied behavior analysis (ABA) postgraduate diploma in 2008. She then took a lectureship teaching behavior analysis at Bangor University, and was invited onto the editorial board of the European Journal of Behavior Analysis. Now she is joining forces with a small but passionate group of professionals trying to promote ABA in the Netherlands.