Romke Rouw is a faculty member in the Psychology department (Brain & Cognition) at the University of Amsterdam, where her work centers on a foundational question: why objective stimuli in the external world are often poor predictors of the rich and varied internal experiences of individuals. Her interest in this question began during her early studies in psychology at the University of Amsterdam and was further shaped by research on mental imagery conducted during a visit to the lab of Stephen Kosslyn at Harvard University. She later earned her PhD at Tilburg University under the supervision of Beatrice de Gelder, focusing on the cognitive processes involved in face recognition.
In her current research, Rouw investigates atypical perceptual experiences in the general population, including synesthesia, misophonia, and ASMR, using a range of methodologies spanning in-lab experiments, online studies, and neuroimaging. Collaborative grants with Dr. Root have supported large-scale investigations of grapheme–color synesthesia across multiple languages. More recently, she has initiated a project on tactile-to-vision synesthesia, exploring how visual features may be “translated” into tactile surface properties, in collaboration with Darren Lipomi at the University of California, San Diego. Alongside her research, she teaches and supervises students across programs in Psychology, Psychobiology, and interdisciplinary studies. Rouw is also an active public communicator, regularly giving lectures and interviews aimed at increasing awareness of the profound variability in how individuals perceive and interpret the world.