Iske Bakker

I coordinate the research administration of the groups of Tim Behrens and Heidi Johansen-Berg. My responsibilities include monitoring grant budgets and expenditure, reporting to funders, assisting with grant applications, overseeing the ethical review process for research studies, and coordinating HR processes (e.g. recruitment, contract extensions, visitors). I liaise between the group members and administrative teams at the department and university level to make sure these processes run as smoothly as possible.

Currently I am also providing maternity leave cover as interim WIN Centre Manager, alongside Kaitlin Krebs. In that role I have primary responsibility for grant and fellowship hosting requests and internal MRI ethics reviews.

My background is in the cognitive neuroscience of memory and language. I did a PhD and postdoc at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, where I used EEG, MEG and fMRI to study how novel words are consolidated and integrated into lexical memory. After that I decided to switch to a more administrative role within research. When I moved to Oxford in 2017 I started as coordinator of INDIREA, a large Marie Curie Initial Training Network at the Dept of Experimental Psychology, before moving to WIN as coordinator for Heidi Johansen-Berg, Tim Behrens, Karla Miller and Steve Smith.

I enjoy making research administration as efficient as possible. Please feel free to come and chat to me about your work and anything I might be able to help with - no issue is too small! I mostly work from home these days, but am always happy to have a Teams call.