The Extra Academic Emporium was established in 2021 to provide novel education inside and outside academia, and to help scientists improve the quality of their research. We aim to improve people's understanding of the content they are studying or working on by making information accessible, concrete, and relating abstract knowledge to real-world situations. In our courses, critical skills are trained to achieve deeper understanding of the material, rather than superficial knowledge.
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Noah van Dongen studied at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and graduated cum laude in Art and Cultural Sciences. After a double PhD track, he received his first doctorate for his thesis Investigations into Art Appreciation and his second doctorate from the University of Turin for the work Methods and Philosophy: Doing Science. As a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam he works on the challenge of making science more objective.
Josjan Zijlmans studied Biological and Cognitive Psychology and graduated cum laude from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He received his doctorate from the VU University Medical Center for his thesis Neural correlates of antisocial behavior in multi-problem young adults. He works as a post-doc at the department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of VUmc where he studies the mental health of children in psychiatric care. In addition, he works on furthering the understanding of psychedelic experiences and their uses.