Congratulations to Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues and Gerlov van Engelenhoven
We are delighted to announce that two of our teaching staff members, Kamila and Gerlov have won prestigious grants. Kamila received an ERC Starting grant and Gerlov received a VENI grant. We are incredibly proud of Kamila and Gerlov for their achievements. Their success is a testament to their hard work and dedication. We are confident that they will make significant contributions to their respective fields. You can read all about their grants and research below.
“City tales: an art-based participatory framework for studying migration-related diversity” (ARTIVES)
The European Research Council (ERC) awards ERC Starting Grants of 1.5 million euros to outstanding, talented young researchers to allow them to set up their own research team and start an independent research project. Kamila’s research plan can be summarized as follows: Current mainstream discourses on migration and diversity fall short in representing contemporary European urbanity. The “City Tales” project will study imaginaries of diversity portrayed by Afro-European artists in Lisbon and Rotterdam in their films, performances and (oral) literature with the aim to explore their transgressive potential of opening possibilities of thinking differently about migration-related diversity.
Their stories will be the departure point to create a theoretical framework of ‘urban artives,’ artistic archives of the city that defy any easy categorizations. Kamila's team will intertwine theoretical conceptualization and artistic creation (they will produce two creative outputs to test the framework) to trace the transnational network of belonging embodied in the local cultural scene and test the possibilities and limitations in relating to these stories without reproducing essentializing binaries such as ‘local’ vs. ‘foreign.’
"Listening to Silence: Silence as Empowerment in Contemporary Dutch Postcolonial Memory”
The VENI grant is a funding instrument from the NWO Talent programme. NWO is the Nedderlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek/ the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research. The NWO Talent programme offers individual grants to talented, creative researchers. The VENI grant is a prestigious grant awarded to early-career researchers. It provides funding for 3-4 years of research. Gerlov says the following about his research: ‘In Dutch society’s discussions about remembering the colonial past, voice is often used as a metaphor for empowerment (“we must raise our voices!”), whereas silence is often used as voice’s negative counterpart, signifying a loss or lack of power (“break the silence!”).
Yet, raising one’s voice is only empowering within contexts in which people are ready to listen to new voices. In contexts in which such willingness or ability to listen is not sufficiently present, one's agency might be best protected through silence: in such cases, silence does not indicate a lack or failure of voice, but a refusal to expose it to judgment or appropriation.
Whether taking shape as silent protests, as vigils, or as artistic expressions such as dance or installation art, silence can express dignity, it can protect, disrupt and reconfigure: silence can be empowering. In this research project, I will therefore explore the empowering potential of silence, in collaboration with decolonial activists, curators and artists.
Understanding silence as a form of expression takes away the pressure for marginalized people to speak ever louder and clearer: perhaps the problem was never people’s ability to speak, but society’s ability to listen.’