The NWO Spinoza Prize is the most prestigious academic distinction in the Netherlands. The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awards the prize to Dutch researchers who rank among the world‘s most eminent scholars and scientists. The prestigious prize is awarded to scholars and scientists for their outstanding, ground-breaking and inspiring research. They are awarded €2.5 million each, which they may spend on the research of their choice.

Spinoza Prize 2012: Professor Annemarie Mol (Anthropology)

Professor Annemarie Mol (1958) is professor of Anthropology of the Body at AISSR (department of anthropology). In her research she uniquely combines philosophy, medical sociology, anthropology, sociology of science and social theory. From an anthropologist's perspective, she studies how we deal with our bodies and in so doing changes deep-rooted paradigms. How do we cope with illness? How do we think and talk about illness? What is eating actually about? Her approach to such questions influences and inspires researchers throughout the world.

The European Research Council (ERC) stimulates high-quality research in Europe by making funds available and supporting ground-breaking research. The ERC mainly honours applications for research that bridges the boundaries of various disciplines, explores ideas in new, emerging research areas or seeks solutions using an unconventional and innovative approach.

The ERC distributes grants and scholarships on the basis of an open contest for projects undertaken by new as well as experienced researchers, regardless of their nationality or age. Only one single criterion applies and that is: research excellence.

A number of AISSR researchers have been awarded ERC Starting, Advanced and Consolidator Grants in recent years, which are worth up to €1.5 million, €2 million and €2.5 million respectively. 

2021

Starting Grants

• Federico Savini: Towards a circular degrowth economy: explaining the material valorization regime of city-regions  

2020

Starting Grants

• Thijs Bol: From School to Career: Towards A Career Perspective on the Labour Market Returns to Education
• Imke Harbers: Legal Identity for All?
• Kristina Krause: Relocating Care within Europe: Moving the Elderly to Places Where Care is More Affordable

Advanced Grants

• Joyeeta Gupta: Climate change, financial coherence and LeavIng Fossil Fuels underground in the changing North-South context

2019

Starting Grants

• Cristóbal Bonelli: Worlds of Lithium: A Multi-Sited and Transnational Study of Transitions towards Post-Fossil Fuel Societies
• Ursula Daxecker: Elections, Violence, and Parties
• Jana Krause: Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts
• Thomas Leopold: Uncovering the Kinship Matrix: A New Study of Solidarity and Transmission in European Families

2018

Consolidator Grant

• Shanshan Lan (Moving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas)
  The reconfiguration of whiteness in China - Privileges, precariousness, and racialized performances 

2017

Advanced Grant

• Dennis Rodgers (Governance and Inclusive Development)
  Gangs, Gangsters, and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography

Starting Grants

• Gijs Schumacher (Political Science)
  Politics and Emotions Investigated Comparatively
• Emily Yates-Doerr (Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body)
  Global Future Health: A Multi-Sited Ethnography of an Adaptive Intervention

2015

Consolidator Grant

• Marieke de Goede (Political Science)
  FOLLOW-Finance/Security practice after 9/11: Following the Money from Transaction to Trial
• Don Weenink (Sociology)
  GROUPVIOLENCE: Groups and violence. A micro-sociological research programme 

2014

​Advanced Grant

• Matthijs Kalmijn (Sociology)
  Family Complexity: Intergenerational Reproduction and Solidarity in an Era of Family Complexity

Consolidator Grant

• Hein de Haas (Sociology)
  MADE: Migration as Development
• Eileen Moyer (Anthropology)
  Becoming Men: Performing Responsible Masculinities in Contemporary Urban Africa

Starting Grants

• Eelke Heemskerk (Political Science)
  Corporate Network Governance: Power, Ownership and Control in Contemporary Global Capitalism
• Daniel Mügge (Political Science)
  The Global Politics of Macroeconomic Measurement 

The NWO Innovational Research Incentives Scheme is directed at researchers in various stages of their careers and includes three forms of grants: 

Veni

The Veni grant offers researchers who have recently gained their PhDs the opportunity to further develop their ideas for a period of three years. The grant is for a maximum of 250,000 euro.

Vidi

The Vidi grant is targeted at researchers who have already gained several years of research experience at a postdoc level and whilst doing so have demonstrated that they can generate innovative ideas which they can independently and successfully develop. They may develop an innovative line of research and appoint one or more researchers for this purpose. The grant is for a maximum of 800,000 euro.

Vici

The Vici grant is targeted at the senior researcher who has successfully demonstrated the ability to develop his or her own innovative line of research and the ability to act as a mentor for young researchers. Vici laureates may build up their own research group, often in anticipation of receiving a tenured professorship. The line of research shall be structurally embedded within the research institute. Experienced researchers may submit a preproposal at least 8 years and no more than 15 years after they have obtained their doctorates. The grant is for a maximum of 1,500,000 euro.

2022

NWO-Vici

• Prof. Daniel Mügge (Political Science): Regulation of Artificial Intelligence in the Shadow of Global Interdependence  

2020

NWO-Veni

• Dr Rowan Arundel (GPIO): WEALTHSCAPES: the spatial inequality of housing wealth accumulation
• Dr Eefje Steenvoorden (Political Science): What does trust in politics mean to you? Types of political (dis)trust and their behavioural consequences
• Dr Petter Törnberg (GPIO): Seeing the city through digital platforms

2019

NWO-Veni

• Dr Cody Hochstenbach (GPIO): Investing in inequality: how the increase in private housing investors shapes social divides
• Dr Liliya Leopold (Sociology): Social Norms, Body Weight, and Well-Being: A Multi-Method Comparison of Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States
• Dr Roderik Rekker (Political Science): Are millennials transforming politics? A study on generational differences in voting 
• Dr Nanke Verloo (GPIO): Strengthening democracy beyond ‘participation’: informal politics and inclusive urban development
• Dr Else Vogel (Anthropology): Veterinary concerns: negotiating different values in the intensive livestock industry

2018

NWO-Vici

• Prof. Dr Sarah Bracke (Sociology): EnGendering Europe’s Muslim Question

NWO-Veni

• Dr Rahil Roodsaz (Anthropology): The Paradox of romantic love: negotiating autonomy and commitment in intimate relationships in the Netherlands
• Dr Sara Geven (Sociology): What do you expect? Studying teacher expectations through an institutional lens
• Dr Eelco Harteveld (Political Science): From ‘disagree’ to ‘disapprove’: the origins and consequences of affective polarization in Europe

2017

NWO-Veni

• Dr Kobe De Keere (Cultural Sociology): Hiring on taste: revealing the hidden power of cultural capital within occupational recruitment procedures 
• Dr Daphne van der Pas (Political Science): Do female politicians talk differently? Or do journalists hear different things?
• Dr Fabio Wolkenstein (Political Science): Democratising Europe Through Transnational Partisanship

NWO-Vidi

• Dr Liza Mügge (Political Science): Misrepresenting Diversity? Identity in politics
• Dr Justus Uitermark (Sociology): Between collectivization and enclosure: examining the uneven provision of clean water, waste disposal and public space in rapidly growing cities

2016

NWO-Veni

• Dr Marcel Hanegraaff (Political Science): Lobbying in the European Union: Why the Political Agenda Favours Some Interests Over Others
• Dr Matthijs Rooduijn (Political Science): Building or Burning Bridges?

NWO-Vidi

• Dr Tom van der Meer (Political science): From a crisis of political trust to a crisis of democracy
• Dr Enzo Rossi (Political science): Legitimacy Beyond Consent
• Dr Rachel Spronk (Anthropology): Sexuality and the Making of the Middle Class: A Comparative Study of Desire and Status in Three African Countries

2015

NWO-Veni

• Dr Thijs Bol (Sociology):  Pay gaps between occupations
• Dr William Boterman (Urban Studies):  Educational inequality and socio-spatial strategies of parents
• Dr Beste Isleyen (Political Science):  The daily governance of transit migration in Turkey  at  European Union borders: the Europeanisation of Turkish border and migration governance

2014

NWO-Vici

• Professor Herman van de Werfhorst (Sociology) -  Between Institutions and Social Mechanisms: Education and Inequality in Comparative Perspectiv

NWO-Vidi

• Dr Daniel Mügge (Political Science) - The politics of economic measurements  

NWO-Veni

• Dr Sofie Marien (Political Science) - The quality of political debate and political trust 
• Dr Emily Yates-Doerr (Anthropology) -  When global health meets local development: a case study of the 'First 1000 Days of Life'-intervention in Guatemala 
• Dr Luara Leite Ferracioli (Political Science) -  Asylum theory for a non-ideal world