Lonely- EU
The LONELY-EU Team
The Lonely-EU Project
The Lonely-EU project is a Horizon 2020 funded project that has started on February 1st 2025 and will run for three years. The LONELY-EU consortium combines scientific expertise, policy expertise, and networking and communication expertise from a diverse array of EU nations. This consortium is guided by its Evidence-to-Action Advisory Board and supported by the WHO, OECD, and other global entities.
Our mission
The LONELY-EU project tackles the pressing societal issue of Social Isolation and Loneliness (SIL) across the EU through a unified strategy, engaging stakeholders at every level. LONELY-EU aims at facilitating the exchange of knowledge and practices, connecting SIL stakeholders, and supporting and encouraging decisionmakers to adopt targeted and evidence-based policies to prevent and mitigate SIL on local, regional, national, and EU levels.
External partners
We work together with World Health Organization (WHO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Work package Leaders
These are the team members of the LONELY-EU project.
Prof Dr Maike Luhmann
Prof. Dr. Maike Luhmann, professor at the Faculty of Psychology at Ruhr University Bochum, is the coordinator of LONELY-EU. In addition to coordinating research and network activities within the consortium, she will lead the development of interactive databases that make secondary data and meta-analytic findings on social isolation and loneliness accessible to a broader audience. She will also use these databases to analyze socioeconomic predictors of social isolation and loneliness across the European Union, building on more than ten years of experience in studying loneliness.
Prof Cristiano Vezzoni
Prof. Cristiano Vezzoni, an expert in survey methods and political sociology at the University of Milan, will collaborate on creating a monitoring framework to assess loneliness across the European Union. His work will focus on designing valid and reliable instruments to detect and monitor loneliness and social isolation across diverse cultural contexts, drawing from prior research data. As a passionate advocate for research infrastructures in the social sciences, both in Europe and globally, he will promote the implementation of the FAIR data principles within the project.
Dr. Hans IJzerman
Dr. Hans IJzerman is a behavioral scientist specializing in social connection, social isolation, and loneliness. He co-leads the development of a monitoring framework to assess loneliness across the European Union and supports global initiatives in psychometric reform, including large-scale, multi-country studies on social health. A pioneer in AI-powered, personalized assessment tools, Dr. IJzerman works closely with policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to translate scientific insights into practical solutions. He is also a leader in the scientific reform movement and an advocate for open, evidence-based approaches to improving social well-being.
Prof Patrizia Catellani
Prof. Patrizia Catellani, an expert in social psychology and advanced statistical modeling at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart – Milan, will help to identify the socio-economic causes and consequences of loneliness using probabilistic models optimized by machine learning techniques. She will also lead the development of a decision support system to support the development of interventions against loneliness in different EU contexts. She will pay particular attention to diagrams and models that can be easily interrogated by relevant stakeholders, such as policy makers and practitioners.
Judith Merkies
Judith Merkies is leading the formulation of evidence-based policy recommendation, though the establishment of the Evidence-to-Action (E2A) Board and the SIL network. With a proven track record in politics, advocacy and network building through her work in public and private sectors, as well as her experience as a Member of the European Parliament and her current academic role at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, she focuses on bridging research and policy to tackle social isolation and loneliness.
Prof Dr Katarzyna Growiec
Katarzyna Growiec, is an expert in social psychology and quantitative methods at the SWPS University in Warsaw, will help to build a searchable database of publicly available datasets on social isolation and loneliness in EU countries. She will also identify possible economic and social consequences of social isolation and loneliness paying special attention to geographical differences in the costs of social isolation and loneliness across EU countries.
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Rob Blaauboer
Rob Blaauboer of Fioti will focus on Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation. He is an experienced journalist as well as project- and work package leader in both national and EU funded projects. He will focus on managing communication in the general sense, help disseminate deliverables including transformation in suitable forms for other stakeholders, as well as together with Judith Merkies (VU), work to build the network of experts and policymakers in order to, in the end, offer policy makers evidence-based policy recommendations that will help lessen Social Isolation and Loneliness.
Migel Silan
Miguel Silan is the Chief Behavioral Strategist for the Annecy Behavioral Science Lab. He specializes in large-scale collaborative projects, especially to tackle cross-cultural measurement challenges in loneliness, social connection and human flourishing. His methodological work foregrounds open and big team science initiatives that accommodate vulnerable populations. Miguel has a proven track record in network and community building, and serves as an associate director in the Psychological Science Accelerator, a globally distributed network of laboratories with more than 2,000 researchers across more than 82 countries.
Yixin Tang
Yixin is a postdoctoral researcher at Ruhr University Bochum. Her research focuses on how
environmental and socialization factors shape individuals’ self-perceptions, and how these
self-perceptions, in turn, influence their interactions with the social world.
As part of the LONELY-EU project, Yixin contributes to Work Packages 3, 4, and 5,
investigating the socioeconomic correlates of social isolation and loneliness across Europe.
Her work focuses on building a comprehensive database on social isolation and loneliness
and translating research findings into actionable insights to support evidence-based policy
and intervention development.
Prakhar Srivastava
Prakhar Srivastava serves as Open Science Officer for the LONELY-EU Project, where he helps develop research management philosophy and data management plans to support open science practices. As a Senior Researcher at Annecy Behavioral Science Lab, he investigates social connection and loneliness with a focus on real-world applications. Prakhar specializes in coordinating large-scale team science initiatives, qualitative methodologies, and systematic literature reviews. He is currently pursuing his PhD at Jamia Millia Islamia, India, where his research explores how cross-group friendships reduce prejudice and foster social harmony.
Sharanya Mosalakanti
Sharanya Mosalakanti is a junior researcher, specializing in psychometrics. She earned her M.A. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India and has worked on developing assessments that capture individuals’ potential in organizations.
At Annecy Behavioral Science Lab, she contributes to the development and analysis of tools designed to better understand the nuances of social connection and human experience.
Francine Putong
Francine Putong is a psychology researcher and communications lead with expertise in digital engagement and mental health. As the CDE contact for this EU project, she leads the design and implementation of communication, dissemination, and stakeholder engagement strategies. At Annecy Behavioral Science Lab, she manages the lab’s social media channels, produces video and multimedia content, and supports visibility across global initiatives on social connection. Francine holds a BS in Psychology (magna cum laude) from the University of the Philippines Diliman and is currently completing her MA in Clinical Psychology at De La Salle University Manila, where she contributes to research on mental health and religious discrimination.
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Hannah Masters
TBA
Dennis Spahr
TBA
Nicola Olsen
TBA
Dr Marco Piastra
Senior Researcher
Dr Asrin Ahmed Yenihayat
Asrin Ahmed Yenihayat is a young social psychologist who has gained research experience in collaboration with several colleagues in different countries. He is originally from Turkey, has done research in England and Malta and is now attending the doctoral program at the Catholic University under Prof. Patrizia Catellani supervision. He loves methodology and wants to apply it in correlational and experimental studies dealing with loneliness and social isolation and how to reduce them.
Federico Santoro
Student research assistant
Federico Santoro is a graduand student at the University of Milan with expertise in statistics and social research methodologies. As a student research assistant, he will support Prof. Vezzoni in designing valid and reliable instruments to detect and monitor loneliness and social isolation. Passionate about political and social science, he studied at the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Copenhagen for a six-month exchange program. He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Milan and is currently completing his MA in Data Analytics for Politics, Society, and Complex Organizations at the University of Milan, where he is working on his final thesis project.