Three Utrecht humanities scholars receive NWO funding

Three Utrecht humanities scholars receive NWO funding

Three Utrecht humanities scholars receive funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) as part of the PhDs in the Humanities programme. This programme offers talented researchers a paid PhD position with the aim of boosting the recruitment and advancement of young talent in the humanities. Funders are the Sustainable Humanities Programme Office and the NWO Social Sciences and Humanities Domain.

Female Latinists in the early modern period of the Netherlands and France

With this grant, Aron Ouwerkerk will spend the next four years researching female Latinists from the early modern period of the Netherlands and France. That women wrote in Latin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is widely considered exceptional. An example from Dutch history is Anna Maria van Schurman, a talented woman who was known as 'the star of Utrecht'.

Ouwerkerk explains his research: "My project focuses on Latin-speaking women writers like Van Schurman. How exceptional were women who were proficient in Latin really? Did they contribute to this image of exceptionality themselves, and could they make use of it? How did this apply to their contemporaries? And how did they shape their representation and legacy in later times? It took me a while to get this project off the ground. Therefore, I am very happy and grateful that I can now fully focus on this project."

• Researcher: Aron Ouwerkerk
• Project title: Uitzonderlijk zijn, worden, of gemaakt worden? Het literaire systeem van vrouwelijke Latinisten uit de vroegmoderne tijd in de Lage Landen en Frankrijk in kaart (ca. 1600-1900)
• Affiliated with: Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication

Referendums and democracy in post-war Western Europe

Jelle Lammerts van Bueren will be investigating the role of referendums in the post-war Western European model of democracy. In the historiography on post-war democracy, the many referendums that were held across the continent have so far largely been ignored, creating the image that post-war democracy was highly constrained. Van Bueren asks why referendums were still debated and practiced within and opposed to the framework of restrained democracy and how we can explain the strikingly divergent referendum experiences in different European states.

"This grant allows me to do this project for the coming four years. I will be working within the political history section under the supervision of Dr Pepijn Corduwener and Professor Ido de Haan. Their feedback, and that of many other members of the section, was of invaluable importance when making the research proposal."

• Researcher: Jelle Lammerts van Bueren
• Project title: Contesting Restrained Democracy
• Affiliated with: Department of History and Art History

Subaltern politics and stability in post-partition Lebanon

In this project, external PhD candidate Charlie Ough will focus on a time of unprecedented intercommunal violence in Mount Lebanon and the successful reconciliation process and fifty-year Long Peace which followed, built by local people of diverse religions and social status. Seeking to highlight local agency, this topic has clear importance today, Ough says. Top-down, foreign-led interventions that do not include all conflicting parties continue to fail in their aims of securing lasting peace.

"I am delighted to have received the funding not only to study this subject but also to become part of the academic community at Utrecht, benefitting in particular from the guidance and support from Dr Ozan Ozavci. Receiving the funding will allow me to pursue my research across multiple libraries and archives in Europe and the Middle East, building a holistic picture of attitudes to conflict and peace among Western, Ottoman, and Lebanese actors alike."

• Researcher: Charlie Ough
• Project title: Vrede verzekeren: Subalterne politiek en stabiliteit in het post-partitionele Libanon, 1858-1914
• Affiliated with: Department of History and Art History

More informationMore about the NWO PhDs in the Humanities