Welcome to our 10th newsletter! DynaMORE is an international research project that aims to promote stress resilience and improve mental health and well-being in the face of adversity. It is spearheaded by Prof. Dr. Raffael Kalisch from the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR) and is funded by the European Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. Dr. Sara Stöber (concentris) was the project manager from April 2018 to February 2023 until her colleague Sonja Leissner took over the project management in March 2023. If you are receiving this newsletter as a forwarded message but would like to actively subscribe to receive DynaMORE-specific news, please enter your email address here.

Save the dates

Mark your calendars and get ready for exciting events ahead! Here's a sneak peek at our upcoming dates that you won't want to miss.

International Seminars on Resilience Research

The International Seminars on Resilience Research are organized by Karin Roelofs (Radboud University), Erno Hermans (Radboud University Medical Center), Birgit Kleim (Psychiatric University Medical Center, Zürich), Anne-Laura van Harmelen (Leiden University) and Raffael Kalisch (LIR, Mainz).

On 25 January 2024, 4 pm CET, Michael Ungar, Professor of Social Work, Dalhousie University (Canada) will speak about "Multisystemic Approaches to Researching Young People’s Resilience: Discovering Culturally and Contextually Sensitive Accounts of Thriving".

• Sign up here to receive updates about the seminar series
• Click here for the upcoming dates and topics

New publications - read in, find out

By now, DynaMORE researchers have published a total of 43 project-funded publications, including 3 high-impact manuscripts (“Positive Prospective Mental Imagery Characteristics in Young Adults and Their Associations with Depressive Symptoms” by Marciniak et al. (2023) in Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1497 views; “Individualizing deep dynamic models for psychological resilience data” by Köber et al. (2022) in Scientific Reports, 1473 views; and "Trajectories of resilience and mental distress to global major disruptions" by Schäfer et al. (2022) in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Impact Factor 19.9) and 4 consortium publications, some of them brand-new: 

1. “Investigating two mobile just-in-time adaptive interventions to foster psychological resilience: research protocol of the DynaM-INT study” by Bögemann et al. (2023a) in BMC Psychology 
2. “Psychological Resilience Factors and Their Association With Weekly Stressor Reactivity During the COVID-19 Outbreak in Europe: Prospective Longitudinal Study” by Bögemann et al. (2023b) in JMIR Mental Health
3. “Dynamic Modelling of Mental Resilience in Young Adults: Protocol for a Longitudinal Observational Study (DynaM-OBS)” by Wackerhagen et al. (2023) in JMIR Research Protocols
4. "Coping with COVID: risk and resilience factors for mental health in a German representative panel study" by Riepenhausen et al. (2022) in Psychological Medicine

DynaMORE tools & methods finding wide application 

• Australian Research Council project on emotion regulation flexibility (lead: Macquarie University Sydney)
• ERA-NET NEURON project PHASR-PP (lead: LIR, Mainz)
• EU Horizon2020 project RESPOND (lead: VU Amsterdam)
• EU Horizon Europe project FAMILY (lead: ErasmusMC Rotterdam)
• HEALTHY BRAINS STUDY (lead: RadboudUmc Nijmegen)
• Old age COVID study (University of Amsterdam)
• Personalized Parkinson Project (RadboudUmc Nijmegen)
• Psychotherapist study (lead: University College London)
• Youth Emotion Project (lead: UCLA, California, USA)

Successful #resilience2023 conference

The 9th International Symposium on Resilience Research has left all attendees with memorable impressions, lots of new scientific ideas, and the joy of sunshine in Germany in late September! The symposium took place from 27-29 September 2023 in Mainz and covered the latest developments and breakthroughs within the field of stress resilience. Highlights were, again, outstanding talks and speakers, an interesting poster session, and our very own DynaMORE member Sophie Bögemann winning a poster award. So well-deserved, congrats!

ARTE documentary featuring Raffael Kalisch

Don’t miss out, the 1-hour documentary is only available until 14^th December 2023 in both French (FR) and German (DE) language. In this ARTE video “Resilience – what strengthens the soul?”, LIR scientists get to the bottom of current questions about stress and resilience. Find out more about our DynaMORE project from interviewee Prof. Kalisch and about the BEWARE project from Prof. Wessa, and get insights from Prof. Müller on what we as humans can learn from resilient mice!

For more press coverage of the DynaMORE project, visit our website.

Productive 12th Steering Committee Meeting

At a time when team members at our partner sites in Israel (TAU and TASMC) were under intense stress due to the Gaza conflict, the Steering Committee (SC) still assembled, alas only remotely, on 10 October 2023 for the 12th SC Meeting to focus on science and important data-centred discussions. One of the greatest things about science is that it brings people from all backgrounds together to work towards a common goal – in DynaMORE that is to understand and enhance people's stress resilience in daily life. A big thank you to everyone who participated and made this meeting so productive.

4th periodic report to European Commission

The 4th periodic report has been assembled, edited, and finalized by the project management office (PMO) over the past two months and has just been submitted to the European Commission (EC) for review by the project officer and independent experts. A big thank you goes out to all work package (WP) leaders and everyone who contributed to yet another high-quality report. A public summary of the 4th research period, spanning from 01 April 2022 to 30 September 2023, is available on the project website.

Congrats to Marta on the new position!

Congrats to the new father!