It is with profound sadness that we share the news that Professor Andrea Evers passed away on August 4, 2025.
Andrea was a visionary leader, a brilliant scientist, and a deeply compassionate colleague. Her pioneering contributions to placebo and pain research, health psychology, and interdisciplinary science were extraordinary. Yet beyond her academic excellence, Andrea embodied a rare balance of scientific rigor and human warmth. She believed as deeply in the power of connection, joy, and wellbeing as she did in empirical investigation, and she lived those values fully.
Since 2016, Andrea served as Secretary of the IASP PAIN and Placebo Special Interest Group, where she offered a steady flow of ideas, support, and inspiration. She was also President of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies (SIPS), a role in which she strengthened the identity of our global research community, brought diverse voices together, and fostered a deeply collaborative culture. As founding director of the Interdisciplinary Placebo Research Center at Leiden University, she created a vibrant hub for research, training, and clinical innovation. Under her leadership, the center became a model for how placebo science can be meaningfully integrated into healthcare.
Andrea also played a key role in hosting the first two international placebo conferences in Leiden, creating important moments of connection and momentum for the field. These events reflected her belief in the power of gathering in learning from one another, challenging one another, and building community together.
Andrea’s impact extended far beyond academic publications. She was passionately committed to turning science into action. Among her many accomplishments, she developed evidence-based training programs and tools for healthcare providers to enhance placebo effects and reduce nocebo responses in routine care, helping to improve patient outcomes and therapeutic relationships. She led and contributed to numerous national and international networks, building bridges across disciplines, institutions, and borders to strengthen the field of placebo research. Finally, Andrea engaged in public outreach and education meaningfully, regularly speaking in the media, at public events, and through workshops to raise awareness of placebo and nocebo effects, and empower patients and practitioners alike.
In the Netherlands, she laid a foundation from which generations of physicians, psychologists, and behavioral scientists will benefit. Her many public appearances helped to give psychology a clearer, more confident voice within the medical world.
As we begin to process this immense loss, let us remember Andrea not only for her remarkable scholarly legacy, but for the generosity, light, and inspiration she brought into our lives. She has left an indelible mark not only on science, but on the hearts of all who had the privilege to work with her as a rare model of enduring challenges and obstacles. She was a builder of bridges between people, between disciplines, and between science and society.
Her legacy will continue through the mission she shaped and the people she inspired. We will be in touch soon to share plans for honoring Andrea’s memory in a lasting way.
Luana Colloca
Damien Finniss
About Andrea Evers
Prof. Dr. Andrea W.M. Evers was professor of Health Psychology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She was also affiliated with the Technical University Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam as Medical Delta Professor Healthy Society. From January 2024, she was also active counsilor for the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid). After her PhD (cum laude), Andrea Evers obtained several personal grants and awards for excellent researchers (e.g. NWO-Veni, NWO-Vidi, NWO Vici, ERC Consolidator Grant) for her innovative, interdisciplinary and translational research on psychoneurobiological mechanisms and treatments for health and disease.
In addition to her broad clinical experience as a registered clinical psychologist, she uniquely combined fundamental and applied science in her translational research, by focusing both on basic research on psychoneurobiology (e.g. placebo mechanisms) and translational research on screening and innovative interventions for somatic conditions (e.g. e-health tools). In 2019, she received the Stevin Award, the highest award in the Netherlands for scientific research with societal impact. She was elected as a lifetime member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Science and Arts (KNAW) as well as the Royal Dutch Society of Science (KHMW). Since 2021, she was also a member of the supervisory board of the VU University Amsterdam.