New ‘Erasmus Professors’ Crone and Buijzen to create impact for five years

Erasmus University has appointed two Erasmus professors. This was announced by Rector Annelien Bredenoord on Tuesday afternoon during the Dies Natalis. These new and interdisciplinary positions will be filled by Professors Eveline Crone and Moniek Buijzen.

This is a new position for professors who focus on the university’s mission: creating social impact. Erasmus professors will be appointed for a period of five years, which will only be renewable for a further five years in exceptional cases. As part of their appointment, they will be given the scope and budget to achieve ‘ambitious objectives’. A new Erasmus professor will be appointed every year, and EUR feels that this should lead to a pool of professors who work together to create impact.

Eveline Crone is professor of Developmental Neuroscience in Society at the ESSB and director of the SYNC lab. She also heads the research consortium GUTS: Growing Up Together in Society, which was awarded a Gravitation grant of 22 million euros in 2022. She has won various research grants, such as the Veni, Vidi and Vici grants of the Dutch Research Council and two grants from the European Research Council. Moniek Buijzen is professor of Communication and Behavioural Change, also at the ESSB. She is involved in the consortium ‘The algorithmic society’ (ALGOSOC), which was also awarded a Gravitation grant of 21.3 million euros in 2022. In addition, she heads the Movez Lab, which uses online media to promote the health of young people. Among other things, she too has been awarded Veni, Vidi and Vici grants and a European research grant.

Pioneers

According to Bredenoord, the pair belong to ‘the absolute vanguard of their field’ and are ‘pioneers in the field of impact’. They are expected to stimulate the academic intellectual climate and to connect academics with one another, among other things by creating impact from various different disciplines.

“You could say that everything that has happened so far in our careers has been a prelude to this position of Erasmus professor,” Crone and Buijzen told EUR in a joint statement. “In addition, over the past two coronavirus years, we have discovered that we are both able and willing to work together well. We sometimes call each other ‘coronavirus lockdown buddies’ as a joke. And this is exactly the message that we are keen to convey: working together creates much more impact.”