NWO grant for two research projects at ICOG

Dr. Kiki Santing and Dr. Suzanne Manizza-Roszak have both been awarded a research grant from NWO. This is a grant from the Open Competition SHH-XS pilot program with a maximum budget of 50,000 euro to enable proposals for curiosity-driven, fundamental research in the research fields covered by the NWO SSH.

Fetishizing and unveiling Dutch colonialism

Suzanne Manizza-Roszak's project is entitled Fetishizing and unveiling Dutch colonialism: Anglophone literary perspectives. The project investigates the problematic representations of Dutch imperialism in contemporary historical fiction by US, UK and Australian writers who have often sanitized these stories for English-speaking audiences, fetishizing colonial-era Dutch womanhood and indulging racially charged representations of Black and Asian colonial subjects. The project also seeks to identify and analyze alternative texts by Anglophone postcolonial and diasporic writers who present new perspectives on the Netherlands’ colonial history and its legacies.

Reconstructing Mosul

Kiki Santing’s research, Reconstructing Mosul: Iraqi and Dutch Perspectives on Efficient and Sustainable Aid, focuses on reconstruction projects in Mosul, Iraq, funded by UNDP’s Funding Facility or Stabilization (FFS), to which the Netherlands is the third largest donor. The political and religious context in which the reconstruction of Mosul takes place is characterised by a complex combination of international actors, a Shia-dominated national government and a predominantly Sunni local administration. The emphasis of this study is on the extent to which this complex context affects the efficiency and sustainability of the FFS funded reconstruction efforts in Mosul and whether this influences Dutch decisions with regards to funding the FFS.

Open Competition SSH

With the NWO Open Competition-SSH, NWO Social Sciences and Humanities wants to offer researchers the opportunity to carry out research into a subject of their own choosing without any thematic constraints. The funding instrument aims to serve a broader group of researchers in different stages of their academic careers. The SSH Open Competition XS pilot Call for proposals is specifically intended to encourage curiosity-driven and bold research that involves the relatively rapid exploration of a promising idea. The proposed research is ground-breaking and it is not certain in advance whether the intended objectives will be achieved. What counts is that the result of each project contributes to the advancement of science.