Seven EUR researchers receive a Vidi grant

Rethinking emergency care: unlocking decentralized capacity sources to reduce response times

Dr. P.L. Van den Berg, Rotterdam School of Management (RSM)

Emergency services under pressure: how can we all contribute to care in case of need? Emergency services save lives, but increasing demand and resource limitations are putting them under pressure. This research explores innovative sources of capacity, such as community first responders and residual capacity of commercial ambulances through an emergency platform. This capacity is independent from the emergency service and its availability is therefore less predictable and controllable, which complicates its effective operational use. The project focuses on the best ways to use this capacity to enhance health outcomes, especially in underserved areas worldwide.

Never waste a good crisis? Aid and chronic care services across Africa

Dr. I.E.J. Bonfrer, Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM)

The recent withdrawal of development aid by the United States and other countries is both a shock and an opportunity for African health care. This project analyses how African governments change their health care financing and what this means for the chronically ill, who make up half of Africa’s patients. The project will unlock existing data on almost 20,000 Africans, develop a new measure for chronic care performance and is the first to apply the econometric “shift-share” method to Health Services Research. This combined effort will inform policy makers about opportunities to strengthen health care financing with less donor funding.

Screening for cardiovascular diseases: The role of behavioural and non-behavioural barriers to uptake

Dr. C.J. Riumallo Herl, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE)

This project aims to understand why individuals do not regularly seek preventive care for cardiovascular diseases. It explores how beliefs about risks and disease severity are formed and influence the decision to attend screenings. By identifying these misperceptions, understanding how these misperceptions are formed, and testing interventions to correct them, this study aims to improve the uptake of preventive care for chronic conditions.

Equalizing the "punitive bite" for the rich and poor: an empirical analysis of income-dependent fines (JUSTFINES)

Prof. Dr. E. Kantorowicz-Reznichenko, Erasmus School of Law (ESL)

Can fines be both fair and effective in deterring, regardless of income? The criminal justice system aims for equal treatment, fairness, and deterrence. Yet, fixed fines impose the same penalty on rich and poor offenders, resulting in unequal burdens and potentially weaker deterrence for wealthier offenders. A possible solution, income-dependent fines (""day-fines""), adjusts penalties based on severity and income and is used in over 40 countries. However, some countries faced failures when adopting day-fines due to poor implementation or public resistance. This project uses experiments, cross-country analysis, and interviews to investigate whether day-fines improve fairness, deterrence, and implementation outcomes.

"That’s Women’s Work!" A mixed-methods multilingual diachronic analysis of cultural discourse about gendered labour in the colonial-imperial nexus (1600-1900)

Dr. N. da Silva Perez, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC)

My research investigates how European colonial powers shaped women's work between 1600-1900, with effects still visible today. The project explores whether women's actual experiences matched European authorities' gender ideologies, and how empires influenced each other's views on women's work. Using a mixed-methods approach, the project team will examine transimperial historical records from Holland, Pernambuco, New France, Gold Coast, and Java to reconstruct women's lived experiences. They'll combine this qualitative historical analysis with advanced quantitative methods, including AI, to analyze texts that helped disseminate gender biases across empires, while also helping to improve AI tools for historical research.

Academia in transition

Dr. J.M. Wittmayer, Erasmus School of Philosophy (ESPHIL)

As society faces major challenges like climate change, inequality, and polarization, people increasingly look to academia for answers. Transformative academic work (TAW) refers to a family of approaches—such as transdisciplinary, action-oriented, and community-engaged research—that work closely with societal partners to find real-world solutions. However, academic systems aren’t always equipped to support this kind of work, as norms around funding, ethics, and researcher roles can pose obstacles. This project examines how TAW fits within current academic structures and how these can evolve to better enable researchers to contribute to inclusive, impactful societal change.

Building Bonds: How Affective Bids for Connection Shape the Quality of Student-Teacher Relationships in Elementary Classrooms

Dr. M. Zee, Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB)

Student-teacher bonds can make or break classroom experiences, predicting teacher well-being and retention, and student educational outcomes. Yet, their complexity is often overlooked, and concrete guidance on deliberately building bonds is lacking. This project crafts a new framework for building bonds to investigate how affective bids for connection—or mundane, everyday events—can foster bonds between teachers and individual students who differ in backgrounds, needs, and behaviors. The knowledge and practical tools resulting from this project may empower teachers with essential relationship-building skills, thereby fostering educational equity and helping to retain teachers in a time of lingering teacher shortage.