Two UG researchers join Dutch National Young Academy

Two young researchers from the University of Groningen have been admitted to the Young Academy: Han Thomas Adriaenssen and Bettina Reitz-Joosse. The Young Academy is a platform within the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) of top young researchers who have original ideas about scholarship and academic policy. The Academy organizes inspiring activities for various target groups in the area of science communication. Every year the Academy selects ten new members from researchers who obtained their PhD less than ten years ago. Membership is for five years. The official installation of the new members will take place on 26 March.

Han Thomas Adriaenssen and Bettina Reitz-Joosse are also members of Young Academy Groningen (YAG), a platform for talented young researchers at the UG that brings together academics from different disciplines. Together they advise the University on research policy and organize activities for the public to strengthen the links between academia and society.

Dr Han Thomas Adriaenssen (History of Philosophy)
Han Thomas Adriaenssen (1985) is one of the most talented young philosophers in the Netherlands. His work includes a book on the Mediaeval roots of the thought of René Descartes. He has also given lectures on the importance of looking not only at the great philosophers but at the less celebrated thinkers too. Adriaenssen has been voted lecturer of the year three times by the UG’s Faculty of Philosophy. Alongside philosophy, he studied Russian and Italian and is in intensive contact with secondary schools and their philosophy teachers. Adriaenssen has been a member of YAG since 2016, where his focus is on academic policy and fostering interdisciplinary research projects. He hopes also to work on these themes at the Young Academy. Cambridge University Press recently published Adriaenssen’s Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes. More about Han Thomas Adriaenssen in this research minute film.

Dr Bettina Reitz-Joosse (Latin Language and Literature)
Bettina Reitz-Joosse (1984) studies how the Romans saw the world around them. She studies Latin texts on ancient buildings and monuments and the landscape. She hit world headlines when she and a colleague revealed that the Italian fascists under Mussolini had hidden a Latin message for the future under an obelisk in Rome. She won the Annual Science Communication Prize 2017 for the communication campaign surrounding the publication of her research into the Codex Fori Mussolini.

Reitz-Joosse calls herself a classicist ‘in heart and soul’ and is convinced that antiquity also plays a significant role in society today. With her international background (born in Germany, studied in Oxford, PhD in Leiden, postdocs in Rome and Philadelphia and now researcher in Groningen) she wants to help place Dutch academic policy in a broader perspective. More about Bettina Reitz-Joosse in this research minute film.