Your future

• Graduated: 2019
• First and current job: KYC/CDD Analyst with ABN AMRO Bank 

After I graduated from the master's programme I had a bit of trouble finding my first job. I initially wanted to join the police as a detective to apply the knowledge I learned in the master in practice. I enjoyed the master and felt I could make a difference in fighting crime thanks to the information I learned. Unfortunately, there are few detective positions, so I did not get the job. Later I got a job at the ABN AMRO bank as a KYC analyst. In this position I analyse the clients and their transactions to assess if they are possibly involved with money laundering, financing of terrorism or other (financial) crimes. In this job I can apply the knowledge of how criminals think and act to accurately assess our clients. On top of that, my knowledge of experts and their biases helps me prevent my colleagues and myself from falling victim to these biases. So, although my career did not go exactly as planned, I am having a lot of fun using the knowledge I learned in the master in fighting crime!

• Graduated: 2019
• First and current job: PhD Candidate at the Department of Cognitive Psychology at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

I liked the master in Legal Psychology. Learning about the important scientific findings in the field and applying scientific findings to practical cases was very interesting and exciting. Some important skills I learned during the master are critical thinking, discussing literature, and explaining scientific findings to laypeople, for example in the expert witness report and public policy report. These skills are all very valuable after your master, regardless of your future career. After my master, I did the research master in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience (Neuropsychology) to learn more about neuroscience. Currently, I am doing a PhD on the effects of stress and exercise on extinction memories.

• Graduated: 2020
• First job: Research Neuropsychologist
• Current job: PhD candidate at the Law School, University of Western Australia in Australia.

How you experienced the master’s and how the master's programme can be useful in your current career: I think fondly of my year at UM despite the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic posed. Although the first months were quite demanding with adapting to PBL, the high workload, and a new city, the small cohort made it easy to connect with your peers and the lecturers were always open to questions. The programme is well-rounded by combining theoretical and practical knowledge delivered by word-class professors and enthusiastic tutors. I am especially grateful for the research internship that allowed me to further strengthen my skills that can ultimately be applied universally in ones/my future job – academic or non-academic. 

• Graduated: 2020
• First and current job: Legal psychologist at the clinic for forensic psychiatry in Haina, Germany

Due to my interest in forensic psychology, legal psychology, and criminology, I decided to study legal psychology at Maastricht University. This programme sparked my curiosity about the dark side of humans and the pitfalls of the justice system.

The programme's balance between providing theoretical knowledge as well as practical applications equipped me with the necessary skills in order to work in a field that interests me.

The experience at UM showed me that I chose the right path for myself, which lead me to a job in a clinic for forensic psychiatry in Germany, where I deal with the assessment and therapy of mentally ill patients who committed criminal offences.

I am very grateful for the opportunities the programme gave me and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in legal psychology and in potentially working with mentally ill criminals.

• Graduated: 2018
• First job: a business consultant at CGI (an IT consultancy agency)
• Current job: head of digital strategy team at Wisemen

After graduating in the master's degree in legal psychology, I started as a business consultant at CGI (an IT consultancy agency) where I started working in an innovation team at one of our clients during my first project. There I had the opportunity to apply the knowledge I had gained in this and the previous research master's degree in a completely different environment. I currently work as head of our digital strategy team at Wisemen, a job where I can combine my people skills with all the biases and heuristics we learned about during the master. Together with my team, we look for ways to make the technologies we develop as intuitive and pleasant as possible to interact with. We do this by questioning people, looking for what they want, how they think and what they are getting stuck on, and then looking for the best solutions based on a number of creative processes.