In June of this year, RAD-bloggers Nina van den Broek and Leonie Tuxhorn presented their work at two different conferences. Nina went to the “Sunbelt 2026” conference in Florida to present on her work mapping the literature to date on the role of social influence in reduced animal-based food intake. It was a great experience to update colleagues in her field and (re)connect with colleagues with similar research interests. And of course, there was some time to get a taste of American cuisine (don’t worry – she did not try the alligator snacks) and to enjoy the early morning beach walks to the conference location in the sole company of seagulls and pelicans.
Research Master student Leonie (supervised by Nina) also reached an exciting milestone in June. Over the past academic year, she worked on her Master’s thesis “Navigating the Social World of Eating”, in which she addresses conceptual inconsistencies that have limited progress in the “social influence on eating” field, develops a mechanistic theory explaining how social signals shape eating behaviour, and derives important methodological implications for future empirical work. She first presented her main findings at the internal Master’s Thesis Conference at Radboud University, where her work sparked lively discussions about the future of social eating research.
Shortly afterwards, she successfully defended the work and was rewarded with deep acknowledgement of the quality and originality of her paper. The defence was an opportunity to reflect on the journey, highlight the conceptual contributions of her work, and celebrate the culmination of months of thinking, writing, and refining. Her thesis is now publicly available on the Radboud University’s repository for anyone curious to dive into the conceptual and mechanistic foundations of social influence on eating as well as the derivable implications for future empirical work: https://osf.io/4d57b/files/89t2n.