David De Cremer

David De Cremer (born 1972) is a Belgian social psychologist examining behavioral applications to organizations, management and economics. In July 2023, he became the dean of Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business. In January 2026, Northeastern indicated he would be stepping down as dean on July 1, 2026. He was previously at the University of Cambridge as the KPMG chair in management studies at Judge Business School. Throughout his career he has lived and lectured in Europe, US, Middle-East and Asia. His most recent work focuses on the role of leaders with regards to AI-driven transformation.

Life and career

De Cremer was born in Leuven, Belgium to an upper-class Belgian-German family. He was educated at the University of Leuven, where he obtained a master's degree in social psychology and a bachelor's degree in philosophy. He obtained his Ph.D. in behavioral science at the University of Southampton in 1999. His Ph.D. focused on the psychological determinants of cooperation in economic decision-making games.

In 2009, De Cremer founded the Erasmus Centre of Behavioural Ethics at the Rotterdam School of Management to study why people respond to certain situations outside of accepted moral norms of behavior.

De Cremer is also a visiting professor at London Business School and China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).

In May 2025, De Cremer was filmed sprinting through Northeastern graduation-ceremony crowds as part of a humorous TikTok video that went viral (with more than 6.4 million views as of Feb. 16, 2026).

Honors In 2011, De Cremer was awarded the ERIM (Erasmus Research Institute of Management; Rotterdam School of Management) “impact on managerial practices” award in the Netherlands for his book on When good people do bad things: On the psychology behind the financial crisis.

De Cremer is an associate editor of the journal Academy of Management Annals. He received the British Psychology Society award for outstanding Ph.D. thesis in social psychology, the Jos Jaspars Early Career award for outstanding contributions to social psychology, the Comenius European Young Psychologist award from the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations, and the Early Career Contribution Award from the International Society for Justice Research. From 2006 to 2011, he was an elected member of the Young Academy of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. In 2013, he was awarded the CEIBS Research Excellence Award (Shanghai, China).