Eddie Brummelman awarded Mercator Sapiens Stimulus 2026
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.