Mara van der Meulen is a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University. After completing her PhD thesis on prosocial behavior and social exclusion in middle childhood, she is now investigating longitudinal trajectories of prosocial behavior from middle childhood to adolescence. She is also interested in development of underlying neural responses to prosocial behavior, and how these responses change as children grow into adolescents. She also enjoys reading several novels at once and taking long hikes.