Despite having always enjoyed “messing around with computers”, I wasn’t quite sure what to do after secondary school, so I studied International Relations at the University of Groningen. Because I really enjoyed doing research, I got caught up in my studies and did a Master’s and a PhD in International Peace Studies with a specialisation in ethics of war at Trinity College Dublin.

Nevertheless, spurred on by an interest in cyber warfare, the technological realm kept calling, and in 2016 I joined the Dutch Tax Service (Belastingdienst) as a Java trainee. Currently I am a junior custom code / full stack developer at the Tax Service’s Competence Center Normalized Systems.