Dr. Philipp Herzog spent two months conducting research at the University of Liège in the fall of 2025. He was hosted by the Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Research Unit (PsyNCog) under the scientific supervision of Prof. Dr. Sylvie Blairy.
As part of the UniGR Guest Professorship, Dr. Philipp Herzog (RPTU University Kaiserslautern–Landau) spent two months conducting research at the University of Liège in the fall of 2025. He was hosted by the Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Research Unit (PsyNCog) under the scientific supervision of Prof. Dr. Sylvie Blairy. The aim of the stay was to establish sustainable, cross-border cooperation in the field of clinical psychological research and to design a joint international research project.
The focus of the stay was the development of the study “Unraveling the link between moral injury, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression”, which uses high-frequency ambulatory surveys (Experience Sampling Methods, ESM) to investigate correlations between moral injury, PTSD, and depression. Together with Prof. Blairy and her team at the University of Liège, Herzog worked intensively on the study design, methodological issues, and practical aspects of implementation. An important milestone was the French translation and planned validation of two internationally established questionnaires on moral injury, which can also be used in Francophone clinical contexts in the future.
“In doing so, we created not only a resource for assessing moral injury in clinical settings but also a central methodological prerequisite for studying moral injury and its psychological consequences in francophone contexts”, said Herzog.
A key milestone of the research stay was the workshop “How to Design Experience Sampling Methods (ESM) Studies in Psychological Science”, which took place on November 18, 2025, at the University of Liège. In an interdisciplinary and practical format, 14 participants from psychology, management, and related disciplines worked together on their own ESM study concepts.
“The different disciplines and career stages of the participants proved particularly enriching (...) These heterogeneous perspectives generated many new impulses – for instance, on how ESM can be meaningfully integrated into workplace health promotion, cognitive neuroscience research, or organizational psychology”, Herzog sums up.
Beyond the classic format of the UniGR Guest professorship, Herzog used his stay to further expand his network within the Greater Region. In addition to his stay at the University of Liège, he spent a week in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Philip Santangelo at the University of Luxembourg, who made decisive methodological advances in the project.
“This visit has greatly improved our research project by [Prof. Dr. Philip Santangelo] by revealing essential methodological details. With [him], I was able to discuss the planned ESM protocol for our joint project in detail. (...) Based on his extensive experience with ESM, we substantially refined the design of the ESM protocol”
At the end of the Guest Professorship, Herzog presented his research at an international level and, together with colleagues from Liège and Luxembourg, submitted a manuscript on passive sensing in clinical research to an international journal. Overall, the stay laid a solid foundation for long-term scientific cooperation between the universities in the Greater Region and led to a particularly dense and diverse research network that extends beyond the actual guest stay.
“The UniGR-Guest Professorship program has thus not only significantly advanced my own research focus on moral injury, PTSD, and depression, but also supported the development of a robust research network between RPTU University Kaiserslautern–Landau, the University of Liège, and other partners in the Greater Region such as the University of Luxembourg”, concluded Herzog.