Stefan Westermann

Chair of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy IV

• Formal modelling and empirically informed simulation (current)
• Interpersonality (current)
• Clinical psychology and psychotherapy (current)
• Interactive paradigms for the assessment of experience and behaviour (current)
• Internet- and mobile-based interventions
• Psychological therapy for people diagnosed with schizophrenia
• Emotion regulation in the context of mental disorders

Publications

Please note that due to a system change, some author names currently appear twice in our publication lists. We apologise for this.

Agatha Dampc M. A.
Secretariat

Angela Hölscher
Secretariat

Stefan Westermann studied psychology at the Philipps University of Marburg, where he subsequently completed his doctorate in clinical psychology under Prof Dr Tania Lincoln (Dr rer. nat.). From 2013 to 2018, he completed his habilitation as a senior assistant in the department of Prof Dr Franz Caspar at the University of Bern (Switzerland) (topic: "The role of motivational processes in the formation, maintenance and treatment of mental disorders"). He has spent research periods at Stanford University (USA), the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig and most recently at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) with the help of a 12-month Advanced Postdoc.mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

After six years abroad, he returned to Germany in 2019, where he worked as a senior scientist in research at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg for a year. In October 2020, he took up a professorship for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at MSH Medical School Hamburg. Since March 2024, Stefan Westermann has held the Chair of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy IV at the School of Psychology and Psychotherapy at Witten/Herdecke University.

Stefan Westermann has worked as a psychotherapist in outpatient and inpatient settings since 2008 and received his full licence to practice as a psychological psychotherapist in Germany (specialising in behavioural therapy) in 2013 and his federal recognition as a psychotherapist in Switzerland in 2014. He has also worked as an emotion-focused therapist (EFT) and supportive therapist as part of therapy studies and completed the general training in analytical psychology at the C. G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht (Switzerland). Since 2020, Stefan Westermann has been recognised as a supervisor according to §4 PsychTh-APrV (VT) at the Institute for Psychotherapy in Hamburg.

Mr Westermann is on the editorial board of the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology and Psychiatry and has served as a peer reviewer for a number of journals (including Clinical Psychology Review, Psychotherapy Research and Schizophrenia Bulletin). He also acts as a reviewer for third-party funding organisations (DFG; Medical Research Council, UK; Wellcome Trust, UK). As an applicant and co-applicant, Mr Westermann has so far raised around 1.5 million euros in third-party funding (including DFG and Swiss National Fund).

Memberships in scientific associations, scientific networks and interest groups

• German Society for Psychology (DGPs)Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR)
• Society for Mathematical Psychology
• European Association of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Treatment (EACLIPT)
• German National Academic Foundation
• Spokesperson and founding member of the interest group "Modelling and Simulation in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy" (Westermann/Kirchner) of the Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of the German Psychological Society (DGPs)
• Coordinator of the DFG-funded scientific network "Computational Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Network (ccpp.network): Formal models and empirically informed simulations of the development, maintenance and change of psychopathology" (Westermann/Banisch)
• Member of the interest group "Personality Dynamics" of the Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of the German Psychological Society (DGPs)