Thijs Vroegh

Statistics Netherlands (CBS), The Hague

Nice to meet you!

I work as a Software Developer at Statistics Netherlands (CBS), working with researchers in the environmental domain. Before that, I worked as a PhD student and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (Frankfurt am Main), where I worked on music-induced states of absorption and related experiences such as flow and mind wandering. I focused on their distinct psychological mechanisms, and how they are associated with aesthetic experiences.

This website is focused on my academic research activities and published works, covering topics on absorption in relation to visual imagery, phenomenology of consciousness, and the application of psychometric network modeling. I graduated with a Ph.D. in Musicology from Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main.

This blog is built with blogdown and Hugo, with the Academic theme. I deploy my blog using Netlify. My blog posts are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Interests

Music and consciousness
Natural language processing
Network science
Data science
R and Python
Digital humanities
Software engineering

Education

PhD., Musicology, 2013 - 2018

Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
BA and MPhil. Musicology, 2004 - 2009

Utrecht University
MSc. Economics, 1994 - 2000

Wageningen University

Academic experience

Over 10+ years of experience with analyzing various forms of data and communicating insights in different domains, including music psychology, digitial humanities and computational social sciences

Software Developer

Statistics Netherlands (CBS)

May 2025 – Present The Hague

Redesigning, building and testing of software, packages and (custom) systems in Python and R
Translating client wishes and ideas from (end) users into a software design and a (re)usable application
Applying professional knowledge and experience to colleagues
Acting as a resource and coach in the areas of R, Python, and SQL
Contributing to discussions about IT facilities that enable data scientists and statistical researchers to perform their work more professionally

Research Software Engineer

Netherlands eScience Center

Feb 2023 – Feb 2025 Amsterdam

Applied temporal social network analysis and NLP on letter data from the Era of the the American Revolution. For more information, please visit its documentation
Created a new Jasp module for conditional process modeling, inspired by the process module from Andrew Hayes. For more information, please visit this blog
Analyzed and compared paintings from Raphael using computer vision techniques. For more information, please visit its documentation
Developed StoryNavigator; a set of widgets to analyse stories for the Orange platform. For more information, please visit its documentation

Researcher

ResearchNed

Apr 2020 – Nov 2021 Nijmegen

Support for 10+ research projects on survey- en registerdata issued by government and educational institutes
Survey programming and development (IBM SPSS Dimensions)

Visiting Researcher

Max Planck Institute for empirical aesthetics

Jan 2020 – Jun 2023 Remote (Franfurt am Main)

Developing a questionnaire aimed at measuring various aspects of aesthetic experience
Used network science to model the experience of flow while performing music
Applied a temporal network approach to mind wandering while listening to music

Postdoctoral Researcher

Max Planck Institute for empirical aesthetics

Jul 2018 – Dec 2019

Utilized Bayesian network modeling and causal discovery algorithms to model connectivity in the subjective mind while listening to music
Coauthored an article centered on several reaction time behavioural experiments to examine the effect of music on task performance
Analyzed music-induced visual imagery as part of an absorbed state of mind with Bayesian networks

Doctoral Researcher

Max Planck Institute for empirical aesthetics

Dec 2013 – Jun 2018

Completed doctorate on the relation between absorption and aesthetic experience with music
Presented at 10+ international congresses
Used structural equation modeling to analyze and model the competing effects of absorption and self-awareness

Affiliated Researcher

Utrecht University

Dec 2010 – Jun 2012

Worked as course assistant ’qualitative and quantitative methods for reception research’
Wrote grant proposals

Projects

Music as hypnosis? A comparative network analysis of entrancing states of mind

Gallery

Publications

Liila Taruffi, Thijs Vroegh (2025). Music and mind wandering: a temporal network analysis. Under review.

Thijs Vroegh (2022). Music-evoked imagery in an absorbed state of mind: a Bayesian network approach. In M. Küssner, L. Taruffi & G. Floridou (Eds.), Music and Imagery: Towards an interdisciplinary framework for research and applications. SEMPRE Studies in the Psychology of Music.

Source Document

Thijs Vroegh (2022). Music as hypnosis? A comparative network analysis of entrancing states of mind. Preprint.

Source Document DOI

Thijs Vroegh (2021). Visual imagery in the listener’s mind: A network analysis of absorbed consciousness.. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000274.

Source Document