Tine Vervoort

Tine Vervoort is Associate Professor at the Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health
Psychology at Ghent University and head of the Health Equity Advancement Lab in Ghent. She has a
background in clinical psychology (MSc, 2003) and psychiatric nursing (BSc, 1998). She became
intrigued in pain research during her clinical psychology internship (2001) at the Bath Centre for Pain
Services (UK) where she worked on a newly developed adolescent chronic pain programme. She has
systematically conceptualized the dynamic interaction between persons in pain and caregivers in
terms that facilitate empirical study of diverse interpersonal dynamics in the context of pain. Drawing
upon an affective-motivational account she leads a theoretically integrative and clinically
informative program of research addressing the role of (observer) empathy, pain-related appraisals
(e.g., injustice), attention and emotion in understanding dynamics of caregiver prosocial as well as
stigmatizing behaviours and how this may differentially impact various health outcomes. She focuses on understanding and targeting health inequities accross various contexts, including pain and suffering, mental health treatments and workplace environments.

She has developed an extensive (inter)national collaborative network across Canada (e.g., (IWK
Children's Hospital in Halifax; University of (Northern) British Columbia, Vancouver; University of
Calgary; Alberta Children's hospital research institute), the United States (Indiana University of
Indianapolis) and elsewhere. Her work has been presented at numerous international congresses and
published within internationally peer-reviewed papers. She serves as section editor Pediatric Pain for
the European Journal of Pain and is founding editor of the comprehensive book ‘Social and
interpersonal dynamics in pain: We don’t suffer alone’; the first volume of its kind to review the
interpersonal dynamics of pain and suffering in depth and systemically. International recognition of her work is
reflected in a number of prestigious awards and scholarships that she has received such as the EFIC
Grünenthal Award (EGG — 2009) for innovative and exploratory clinical pain research, the IASP Ulf
Lindblom Young Investigator Award (2014) for outstanding contributions to clinical pain research and
the Early Career Grant of the IASP Pain in Childhood (2019).

Following her evolving interest in bridging research and clinical work and her ambition to enlarge
societal impact of research, she established PRAKTIJK50; a multidisciplinary clinical practice (founded in 2021)
which she coordinates and where she also works as clinical psychologist. She completed a 2-year postgraduate course on primary psychological care (2020-2022) and recently embarked on a 4-year postgraduate Client Centered Psychotherapy course at KULeuven (2023-2027) allowing her to professionalize her clinical skills and to increasingly integrate clinical insights into research. She is also the proud mother of 4 boys.