At a time like this, social science research is extremely relevant and we would like to make these insights accessible for society. We are appealing to current and former NIAS fellows for contributions.
A Communication from Fellow to Fellows during the Corona Crisis
We are the group of second semester 2019/20 Fellows at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We form a community of some 60 academics from various parts of the world – Iceland, Cameroon, the UK, South Africa, Iran, America, France and the Netherlands. Our group also includes a journalist and artist in residence. We study different societal and scientific questions, e.g. the making and breaking of human relationships, the current attention for imperfectness, labour market inclusion, long term demographic health trends, the impact of religion on politics, to name a few. We come together at NIAS to advance and broaden our work and intellectual thought by becoming part of a critical, engaged and inspiring academic community.
On February 3 2020, we started our research activities at the beautiful venue of NIAS, in a supportive environment with a truly committed staff. Weekly seminars where we present our work-in-progress and get critical feedback from peers is key in our way of working, helping and challenging each other to make progress.
Currently, like many others we cannot work and interact together like we did due to the immense corona crisis. Health is of the utmost priority now even though we miss our colleagues and look forward to the day that we can get together again.
The nature of this double-natured crisis affects an individual’s health and the very core of our social and economic structures. It undoubtedly has an impact on what we are studying now, making Social Sciences and Humanities perspectives extremely valuable at a time like this.
We want to share and start a conversation around how can we put in perspective the immense societal changes going on around us. Interdisciplinary perspectives, as any issue cannot be examined in disciplinary isolation.
It can be an opinion piece, stemming from your own research, observations or a review around 200-300 words. Please email them to communication@nias.knaw.nl
We are alone, together.
Ton Wilthagen (Fellow committee member)