Alithe van den Akker works as an assistant professor in the Preventive Youth Care research group in the Department of Child Development and Education. Her research focuses on the development of temperament and personality traits across childhood and adolescence. She investigates how these characteristics both shape and are shaped by parenting, and how child characteristics and parenting together contribute to the development of problems such as anxiety, depression, aggression and delinquency.
Alithe obtained a bachelor's degree in Health Psychology (2006), and a master's degree in Development and Socialization in Childhood and Adolescence (2008) from the University of Utrecht. She worked at the research group of Clinical Child and Family Studies at Utrecht University, where she obtained a PhD (2013), and as a postdoctoral researcher within Research Priority Area Yield at the University of Amsterdam.