This month, alumna Anouk de Koning (Urban Citizen Fellow 2020) is awarded two large research grants. First, a VICI grant by the Dutch Research Council, enabling De Koning to set up her own research group on the futures of European welfare states. Second, a 5 million euros NWA grant by the Dutch Research Agenda to study social interventions in eight Dutch cities.
Dr. Anouk de Koning received the Vici grant for her project “Prototyping Welfare in Europe: Experiments in State and Society”. The NWA grant is for the project “Social Work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies”.
About the Vici Project
Across Europe, living labs experiment with doing the welfare state differently, seeking to generate cohesive neighborhoods and community welfare in innovative, collaborative ways. Such experiments shape future welfare arrangements, with new relationships between government, citizens and society. This project studies welfare experiments in four European cities with distinct governing traditions, welfare structures, and social fault lines. How do experiments in these cities shape relationships between state, society and citizens? Do they perpetuate existing social hierarchies, or do they move beyond them? And what do they tell us about the futures of European welfare states?
More information about this research project (Leiden University).
About the Vici Grant
The Vici grant (1.500.000 euros) is one of the largest grants in the Netherlands and targets senior researchers who have successfully demonstrated the ability to develop their own innovative lines of research. It enables the laureates to develop an innovative line of research and set up their own research group for five years. In 2022, 34 Vici grants were awarded.
About the NWA Project
Social resilience is seen as the panacea for challenges ranging from deepening inequalities, polarisation to the energy transition. But how can social resilience be created? Working with partners from government, professional associations and knowledge institutions, this project will study social interventions in eight Dutch cities that seek to bolster social resilience by crafting new relations between the state and marginalized citizens. How do social professionals work with policymakers and citizens to envision new state-citizen relations, and how do they deal with the conflicts, dilemmas and power relations they encounter?
Read more about this project (Leiden University)
About the NWA Grant
The aim of the NWA (Nationale Wetenschapsagenda; Dutch research agenda) is to make a positive, structural contribution to the global knowledge society of tomorrow, where new knowledge easily flows from the researcher to the user and where new questions from the field and society quickly and automatically find their way into new research. The NWA programme Research along Routes by Consortia aims to enable interdisciplinary research and innovation that bring societal and scientific breakthroughs within reach. In 2022, 149 million euro was made available to 28 consortia.
NWO has funded research in the context of the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) since 2018 on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.