Helen earned her bachelor’s degree in Organization Studies at Tilburg University and finished the Research Master in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the same university. She defended her dissertation at Tilburg University early 2016. In her doctoral work, she focused on different forms of inter-role conflict. Before moving to Leiden University, she was a Visiting Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School for a year.

Helen has published widely on topics such as occupational stress and health, employee well-being, the work-home interface (including working from home), challenges of dual-earner couples, and group dynamics. Her work in organizational psychology has been published in renowned journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. Helen supervises numerous empirical legal PhD projects that are interdisciplinary in nature, for instance on the topic of employer and employee responsibilities in creating psychosocial safe work environments.

Helen is project leader of the research project Empirical Legal Studies as part of the sector plan for Law. Helen is also a member of the Young Academy Leiden. She is the former chair and vice-chair of YAL.