Esther Rozendaal, after a beautiful Oration on October 4, 2024, may officially call herself Professor. Looking back on it, it has been a few years since everything was put into action, when my then supervisor Moniek submitted a proposal for promotion to the Dean.
The first step was in 2020, and at the time I found that quite complicated so in the middle of the lockdown and the pandemic. At that time I was so busy with other things, my little son who I had to homeschool and so many other things. I really couldn't see it all for myself, but fortunately I was given the time to do so, Esther says. The road to such an oration is one with many bumps. A plan of action for five years and an explanation of how you position yourself within the faculty and university must be written. These are then reviewed by various committees, dean and Board of Trustees. After my appointment on July 1, 2023, it was really time to plan the oration on October 4, 2024. Which did cause some stress at the end of May; it is so different from preparing myself for a lecture that I give so often.
In a lot of lectures, it feels like experiential, knowledge transfer. At the oration I felt something different, much more personal. It's about knowledge transfer but also about me, my research, vision, mission, who I am. It suddenly becomes much more vulnerable, you put a lot of yourself into it. For example, I wanted to look back on my graduation from Business Economics at Erasmus, let Esther know. Entitled “The classroom as a marketing channel” was her graduation thesis, written by an article she read about children's marketing. In it, the author explained why children are actually such an interesting market. But also what marketing does to children fascinated me.
Followed by studying Psychology at Tilburg University, she came into contact with Liesbeth Hop of the MediaRakkers Foundation during her thesis. I had no ambition to go into science, but she sent me a vacancy for a PhD with the theme “Children's Advertising Evidence. I hesitated a lot but applied anyway and got the job! And how glad I am that I made that choice, it really grabbed me.
Esther has been appointed for a while now, it does feel like normal again, but it is clear to me where I am now and how I want to proceed. I'm taking a break now to see if everything aligns with what I really want to achieve. But I look back fondly on my path towards and during the oration, it's nice to take it in and be able to say: this is what we're about! The big difference for Esther between lectures and an oration? Seeing the friends and family in the hall. Just put me in a room with people I don't know! It felt vulnerable, but once on that stage I felt so carried and also definitely had my anchor points within the audience which gave me peace of mind.
If Esther could choose one thing that was the best thing towards the oration. It was the incredible interest of people around her. Everyone wanted to offer me help right away, because it's actually quite a lonely project. Everyone really held out a hand, asking how they could help me. Which is exactly what is so beautiful, because in science you don't do anything alone but really together, and what normally wasn't teamscience just became it.
Within her PhD and further in her career, there was only one insight after much research, if children are advertising evidence that they are also more resilient. I found no evidence of that, because having wisdom and knowledge about the effects of media does not directly lead to resilience. I kept thinking about that, why is that so? In recent years, Esther has been working with that question. For example, there are three main reasons why wisdom does not lead to resilience: brain development (it functions so differently), lack of motivation (they know but wanting is something else), characteristics of today's online world (the design of platforms makes it very difficult for children to be resilient).
It is all very challenging for children and that is what I am going to do now. I want to discover what children need to be resilient online. Would you like to be informed about updates on the research? Keep an eye on our website!