Dr. Valeria Gazzola has been awarded a prestigious €1.5 million NWO Vici grant for her project Empathy, helping and aggression: unravelling the missing neural link.

The Vici grant enables senior researchers to develop innovative research lines and establish their own research group. Gazzola’s project focuses on a fundamental question in social neuroscience: how and when empathy for others can inhibit aggressive behaviour.

Aggression causes significant social and economic harm, yet the underlying brain mechanisms remain only partly understood. While it is known that observing another person’s pain activates brain regions involved in empathy, it is still unclear how these signals influence decision-making and help prevent harmful actions. Gazzola’s research aims to uncover how the brain translates empathy into self-restraint, and how this “empathy brake” adapts across different situations.

By investigating how empathy shapes behaviour, the project will contribute to a deeper understanding of social interactions and may ultimately inform strategies to reduce aggression and support prosocial behaviour.

Dr. Eddie Brummelman has been awarded the prestigious Mercator Sapiens Stimulus, a €1 million research prize presented by the KHMW. The award recognises mid-career researchers with an ambitious and socially relevant research agenda and provides them with full academic freedom to pursue innovative ideas.

With this funding, Brummelman – Associate Professor of Pedagogy at the University of Amsterdam – will launch the interdisciplinary project Generation Hope. The project investigates how children perceive and experience economic inequality and how these perceptions shape their self-image, expectations for the future, and wellbeing.

Economic inequality is highly visible in children’s daily lives, yet we still know little about how they interpret these differences or what they mean for their development. By placing children’s perspectives at the centre and involving them directly through participatory approaches, the project aims to generate new insights into how inequality influences young people and how we can support them to grow up with a sense of hope and opportunity.

Generation Hope brings together expertise from pedagogy, developmental psychology, sociology, economics, the humanities and the arts, and builds on Brummelman’s work within KiDLAB on children’s self-concept and social context.

Dr. Anita Harrewijn has been awarded an NWO XS grant for her project Promoting resilience to anxiety at school: mechanisms and youth-informed support strategies. The XS scheme of the Dutch Research Council funds curiosity-driven and high-risk research, giving researchers the opportunity to develop innovative ideas at an early stage.

Harrewijn’s project focuses on the early recognition of anxiety symptoms in school settings and on identifying protective factors that help young people keep anxiety manageable before it develops into a clinical problem. By actively involving young people through co-creation, the study aims to develop practical, everyday support strategies for parents, teachers, and schools.

The project contributes to a better understanding of how resilience to anxiety can be strengthened in daily educational contexts and highlights the importance of youth-informed approaches to mental health support.

Dr. Yara Toenders has been awarded a KNAW Early Career Award by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, recognising her as one of the most promising young researchers in the Netherlands. The award honours innovative scientific talent and supports the further development of early career researchers across disciplines.

Toenders, a researcher in Clinical Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and affiliated with the SYNC lab, studies the mental well-being of young people from a neurobiological to a societal level. Her work examines how factors such as sleep, social media use, music, and role models shape mood, resilience, and self-perception during adolescence.

A distinctive feature of her research is its interdisciplinary and participatory approach: young people are actively involved as partners in the research process rather than only as participants. By connecting fundamental neuroscience with lived experiences and policy contexts, her work contributes to actionable knowledge on strengthening youth mental health and well-being.

This recognition highlights the importance of youth-centred, transdisciplinary research on mental health.

Prof. René Veenstra has been appointed as a member of the Social Sciences Council of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Social Sciences Council promotes the social sciences at both national and international levels. It provides strategic advice, proposes new research topics, contributes to peer review processes, and fosters collaboration between researchers and institutions. The council also organizes plenary conferences that bring together scholars from across the social science disciplines.

René Veenstra is Professor of Sociology at the University of Groningen and is internationally known for his research on peer relations, bullying, and social networks in adolescence. His appointment strengthens the representation of youth and developmental research within the council and contributes to the visibility of this field in broader social science agendas.

March 27, 2025

Establishment of the Societal and Ethical Advisory Board for GUTS

We are proud to announce the establishment of our new Societal and Ethical Advisory Board.

This advisory board will play a crucial role in supporting the Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS) research program by providing strategic guidance and valuable insights from society. The board consists of a diverse group of experts and professionals who will contribute their knowledge and experience to ensure that the societal perspective of and for young people remains central to our research program.

Board members

Margrite Kalverboer, Children’s Ombudsperson

Jane Murray Cramm, Chief Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Center; Professor of Person-Centered Care

Sicco de Knecht, Director, National Expertise Center for Science and Society

Frederieke Vriends, Director, MIND Us

Roline de Wilde, Director, Kindertelefoon (Children’s Helpline)

Marie-José van Tol, Chair, Steering Committee National Mental Health Plan

Linda Kroeskop-Bossenbroek, Manager of Knowledge & Innovation, Dutch Brain Foundation

Katy de Kogel, Senior Researcher, Scientific Research and Data Center

Jolien Dopmeijer, Senior Researcher, Trimbos Institute

Neeltje van den Bedem, Senior Advisor, Development and Upbringing, Netherlands Youth Institute

Frank Kupper, Athena Institute; Theater Maker

The advisory board will focus on enriching the GUTS research program, critically evaluating the design of our studies, and contributing ideas on how research outcomes can be integrated into society and policy. The goal is to make informed decisions that safeguard the rights, opportunities, and well-being of young people.

We are confident that the establishment of this advisory board will have a tremendously positive impact on our science-society approach, and we look forward to working with this dedicated group of professionals.

For more information about the advisory board members and their roles, please visit the advisory board page or contact us.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash