Thriving & Healthy Youth

The Thriving & Healthy Youth research community focuses on resilience in children and young people. The community forms part of the strategic theme ‘Dynamics of Youth’.

Course-of-life perspective

The researchers at Thriving & Healthy Youth are specifically looking at how to support children so that they have the opportunity to develop in a healthy way. They examine children’s development from a life-course perspective. The community does not focus on a specific age group, but rather on development from early childhood through to adulthood. How do children develop resilience?

Read more about the research area

Activities and projects

  • Start of the Academic Year 2026-2027 The annual celebration of the start of the academic year of Utrecht University will focus on healthy youth this year.
  • SPACES How to design an outdoor space where all children can play, exercise and relax?

Resilience Funding Call

The ‘Thriving and Healthy Youth’ community has launched a call for grant applications to encourage collaboration between different departments on the theme of resilience. Do you have a research idea in collaboration with a UU colleague from another department and/or faculty?

Read more about funding

Team

Heidi Lesscher, Sanne Nijhof & Odilia Laceulle

The ‘Thriving and Healthy Youth’ community brings together paediatricians, educational psychologists, game scientists, neurobiologists, clinical psychologists, lawyers, behavioural scientists, developmental psychologists, geographers, educationalists and others.

Our chairs are Prof Odilia Laceulle, Dr Heidi Lesscher and Prof Sanne Nijhof.

Meet tour team

Get in touch:

Would you like more information, to join our community or to stay up to date? Please send an email to: thriving.youth@uu.nl.

Would you like to stay up to date with all the activities under the ‘Dynamics of Youth’ strategic theme?

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