For its 50th anniversary, NIAS presents an historical narrative of the establishment, importance and endurance of fifty years of academic freedom at the Institute. "The great challenge for the scholarly community will be to preserve and strengthen our academic freedom, to keep expanding our view. Knowledge is the only natural resource that grows when being used," writes Robbert Dijkgraaf in one of the included essays. "It should be the aim of any institution of higher learning to increase its intellectual biodiversity, both in-depth and breadth."
On 15 October, NIAS alumni reconnected with the Institute and each other during an online reunion, which included a reading by novelist David Mitchell. In “BELONGINGS’, written especially for the occasion, he tells a story about scouting, Brexit, Twitter, succumbing individuality, and belonging to a club.
Archeologist Ghazwan Yaghi, currently at NIAS to research Mamluk bath houses, fled from Syria in 2014. He is now nominated for the annual UAF Award, a prize that acknowledges the commitment and perseverance of researchers with a refugee background. NIAS and the UAF have been cooperating since 2014 by offering sanctuary to scholars who are under threat of attack.
NIAS and the Instituut Gak invite scholars with expertise in the field of social security and labour market policy to apply for a 5-month fellowship in 2022/23.
The call for nominations for the Distinguished Lorentz Fellowship (DLF) is open until 1 November. The fellowship is awarded annually to a leading researcher working at the interface between the humanities and social sciences on the one hand and the natural and technological sciences on the other.
Rewatch the debate "The true value of work". Why has Dutch labour market policy failed and what can be done to fix it?
THROWBACK: EVENT
Value of Work
The Dutch participation law, intended to increase labour participation, has failed, says former fellow Ton Wilthagen. During a public event De Echte Waarde van Werk he offers alternatives, as laid down in his white paper on the topic. The event, with Alderman Rutger Groot Wassink and Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Employment, Dennis Wiersma, marked five years of fruitful cooperation between NIAS and the NSvP.
On 30 November, NIAS' very first publication of Dutch literature "Thuis. Een bloemlezing over verbondenheid" will be published. In a rich collection of personal stories, poems and essays, written especially for this collection, thirteen of our writers-in-residence take a critical look at feelings of belonging. With Matthijs van Boxsel, Maria van Daalen, Hélène Gelèns, Kees 't Hart, Atte Jongstra, Lieve Joris, Jannah Loontjens, Marcel Möring, Hagar Peeters, Aleid Truijens, Henk van der Waal and Christiaan Weijts, and a foreword by Tommy Wieringa.
This book chapter is subtitled Interracial Sex, the South African Immorality (Amendment) Act (1950), and "Petty" Apartheid, and is published in The Routledge Companion to Sexuality and Colonialism. The chapter deals with the 1950 Immorality (Amendment) Act passed by the Afrikaner National Party (NP), which criminalized extra-marital interracial sex between heterosexual white South Africans and people of other “races.”
The regime’s rush to criminalize whites’ engagement in illicit sex across the colour line after 1948 and the state’s rigorous enforcement of the law demonstrate that sexual regulation was at the heart of the apartheid project. Nevertheless, sexuality has yet to be sufficiently integrated into the prevailing dominant historical understanding of apartheid.
Global War, Global Catastrophe presents a history of the First World War as an all-consuming industrial war that forcibly reshaped the international environment and, with it, impacted the futures of all the world’s people.
Narrated chronologically, the authors identify key themes and moments that radicalized the war’s conduct and globalized its impact, affecting neutral and belligerent societies alike. Above all, the book argues that only by integrating the history of neutral and subject communities can we fully understand what made the First World War such a globally transformative event.
All are welcome to celebrate the publication of this new book and find out more about the global history of the Great War on the online book launch on 27 October.
