Awards and major grants include:
1989 Blozo Award for sports research, government of Flanders, Belgium for my book on the 1985 Heysel stadium disaster;
1990 5-year postdoctoral fellowship from the (then) Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences
1991 Van Poelje Award for best publication from the Netherlands Society for Public Administration for my phd thesis ‘Groupthink in Government: A Study of Small Groups and Policy Failure’
1997 Erik H. Erikson Early Career Award from the International Society for Political Psychology
1998 Aandachtsgebied grant from the Dutch Research Council, a 5-year grant to build a research team investigating crises and reforms in public policy (700K Euro)
2007 Herbert Simon Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book in the area of public administration across 2005 and 2006 for The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership under Pressure’
2007 Hugo Raab best book award from the Swedish Defence University for ‘The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership under Pressure’
2011 Sam Richardson best article award from the Australian Journal of Public Administration, for an article on crisis management
2014 Elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)
2015 Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, a 5-year grant to build a research team studying successful public governance (2.5M Euro)
2016 Elected member of Sociaal-Wetenschappelijke Raad of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
2019 Henry Mayer Best Book Award of the Australasian Political Science Association for ‘The Pivot of Power: Australian Prime Ministers van Political Leadership, 1946-2016’
2021 Best Article Award of the journal Policy and Society for an article on the dynamics of inclusion in collaborative governance
2024 Stevin prize from the Netherlands Science Foundation for career contribution to the practical use of knowledge in society (1,5M euro)