Dietsje Jolles is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education and Child Studies at Leiden University, The Netherlands. She has a background in developmental cognitive neuroscience, with a specific expertise in learning and cognitive skill acquisition. In her current research, Dietsje employs an interdisciplinary approach to study the complex interplay between learning and (neuro)cognitive development, integrating insights from cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and the educational sciences. Her research can be summarised in two main themes: (1) training and transfer of foundational cognitive abilities, including working memory, numerical abilities, and spatial cognition, and (2) developmental and individual differences in learning and academic performance, with a specific focus on children’s cognitive control abilities and learning strategies. She studies these topics from different angles and using different research methodologies, including behavioural experiments, intervention studies, and neuroimaging techniques.
Dietsje received her PhD in developmental cognitive neuroscience from Leiden University in 2011, after which she spent 2,5 years as a postdoc at Stanford University. In 2014, she started as Assistant Professor Educational Sciences at Leiden University, and from summer 2017 to spring 2019 she was a visiting research associate at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).