Linda Marjoleine Geven was born on January 22nd 1992 in Meppel, the Netherlands. She is fluent in Dutch, English and German, and proficient in Castilian Spanish.
In 2014, she completed a bachelor degree in Psychology at the University of Vienna in Austria. Her undergraduate research focused on resilience in young offenders and the dark triad, while her minor included criminal law. After volunteering in an organization for reintegration into society after imprisonment, and partaking in a summer school on Crime, Law and Psychology, Linda enrolled in the master program Legal Psychology at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. In 2015, she received the master degree with distinction (cum laude). Her research internship, investigating the effects of cognitive load on deception detection, was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Aldert Vrij at the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom.
Linda completed a joint doctorate degree (2015-2019) at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel under the supervision of Dr. Bruno Verschuere, Prof. Gershon Ben-Shakhar, and Prof. Merel Kindt. The aim of her research project on memory detection was to bridge the gap between research and practice, by investigating both new applications and boundary conditions of the Concealed Information Test. During her PhD, Linda published multiple scientific articles and a book chapter, followed several courses on legal and forensic topics, statistics and teaching, and she supervised over twenty (under)graduate students.
In 2016, Linda was awarded with a scholarship of the Stichting Fonds Catharine van Tussenbroek, which provided her with the opportunity to conduct research at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, United States under supervision of Prof. Saul Kassin. In this period, she received training as an expert witness regarding false confessions and completed the Reid Interview and Interrogation Course.
In February 2020, Linda was appointed as assistant professor at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden University. She teaches bachelor and master courses on legal psychology, methods and statistics, as well as the cold case project.
Linda has served as ad-hoc peer-reviewer for various journals, and is the secretary of the European Association of Psychology and Law. Linda has presented her work at several international conferences and received an award for the “most outstanding and innovative student paper” from the European Association for Psychology and Law in 2017. She was interviewed for several scientific magazines such as New Scientist, has given guest lectures both to students and for example at the Dutch Police Academy, and her research was featured in the scientific television shows TopDoks and Klaas Kan Alles.
Since 2022, Linda works as an expert witness under supervision, hoping to be registered in the Nederlands Register Gerechtelijk Deskundigen in the near future. She is also a legal psychology expert for the Landelijke Expertisegroep Bijzondere Zedenzaken.
In the future, Linda wishes to continue investigating wrongful convictions and contribute to accurate discrimination of guilty and innocent suspects. In 2022, she was awarded an NWO-VENI grant (€280.000) for further research on false confessions in Europe, as well as grants from Leids Universiteits Fonds / Gratama Stichting and Universiteitsfonds Limburg SWOL (combined €20.000) to launch the European Registry of Exonerations (EUREX) with Dr. Jenny Schell-Leugers and Teresa Schneider.
