Geary Fellow, Dr Laura K. Taylor receives a ERC Consolidator Award to explore how identity can influence peacebuilding.

The renowned European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Award has been given to Dr. Laura K. Taylor, Associate Professor at the UCD School of Psychology, Geary Fellow, and Principal Investigator of the Helping Kids! lab.

For her GENERATION EU project, which will investigate how youth form and align with a "European" identity and the potential effects on social cohesion and peace, Dr. Taylor will receive €2 million.

On December 9, 2025, the ERC announced that 349 mid-career researchers will receive a total of €728 million in Consolidator Grants. These funds, which are funded by the EU's Horizon Europe initiative, will encourage innovative research at universities and research facilities across 25 EU Member States and related nations.

For this highly competitive call, the ERC received 3,121 applications, a 35% increase over the previous round. The Consolidator Awards, which honour exceptional scholars, are intended to assist individuals in a professional stage where they may still be assembling their own independent research teams in order to pursue their most promising research concepts.

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The GENERATION EU Project

Children and young people make up around one fifth of Europe’s population, many of whom belong to the first generation of native EU citizens in their countries. How they relate to and support Europe will have important consequences for peace across the continent.

The GENERATION EU project examines how European identity develops from childhood through young adulthood, and how this shapes peacebuilding and society more broadly. Project lead Dr Laura K. Taylor explains that broad or “superordinate” identities such as being European can both unite and divide. Research in conflict-affected regions shows that children who felt more European were more likely to help and cooperate with peers from rival groups, yet such identities have also been used at national levels to marginalise minorities.

Launched at a critical moment, GENERATION EU aims to deepen understanding of how young people come to adopt shared identities, highlighting both their potential to foster peace and their unintended risks. Using an intergroup developmental framework, the project combines cross-national surveys, experiments, archival work and large-scale text analysis to create new models and tools for psychology and peacebuilding, with relevance for Europe and other regions worldwide.

Learn more about the ERC Awards and see the full list of Awardees for this round (opens in a new window)here.