Innovation is a central theme in science and society. We tend to delegate innovation to the technical and natural sciences and to medicine, in that we emphasize the R&D side of innovation. But first of all, innovation can obviously affect all societal domains. Classicists, who collectively study ancient societies as a whole, are in an excellent position to observe this. And secondly, research has shown that the ‘human factor' is crucial in converting inventions and new ideas into successful and actualized innovation. New possibilities need to be realized and embedded in societal practices. New ideas need to ‘land' in the intended target-group. They must fit the thoughts, knowledge, beliefs, convictions and understanding of human actors. Human beings have certain ways of conceptualizing their world, and talking and communicating about it, and different groups will react differently to the same new information. Knowledge about such issues, which is crucial to successful innovation, can be provided by the Social Sciences and the Humanities.

The concept that we are developing is that of anchoring, intended as a new ‘tool for thinking' and a potential breakthrough for the Humanities. Anchoring is a label for the many different ways in which people connect the new to the old, the traditional, the already known. What is called or considered ‘old' or ‘new' is not always a matter of objective diagnosis: it is a judgment established through discourse and societal negotiation. In either case, whether something is decided to be ‘old' or ‘new', the phenomenon under discussion may be accepted or rejected, depending on the evaluation of the new and the old. This evaluation is again a matter of societal negotiation. Anchoring innovation is about the way in which people regard and cope with ‘newness', and about the question under what conditions new things become ‘anchored', and thus successfully implemented - or not!

Project Leader & Researcher

- As member of the Board I am co-responsible for the agenda as a whole and especially for the projects on politics, economics, religion and philosophy

- I carry out my own project The justice of the lot in the section on politics (see above, project 2)

- in the section on economics, I supervise a postdoc project on the Introduction of coinage in archaic Greece; this project also ties in with the wider theme of the connections between Greece and the Near East (see above, project 1)

- in the near future (1 à 2 years), one PhD project on politics and one postdoc project on religion will join the UU team under my supervision for Anchoring Innovation.

NWO grant The Gravitation Grant provides a budget to the UU for my own share in the program, two postdoc projects and one PhD project.

• www.ru.nl/oikos/anchoring-innovation

Researcher

Utrecht University

On the current scholarly view, women citizens in Athens had no property of their own and notably could not dispense of more than the value of one medimnos of barley (ca. three drachmae) without the consent of their legal guardian (kyrios). This view is based on a law quoted by the orator Isaeus (10.10). However, there is plenty of evidence pointing in a different direction. Archaeological, epigraphical and literary evidence features numerous women who apparently independently and without much ado dispense of hundreds and even thousands of drachmae to others. What is going on here? What is the relation between the law to which Isaeus refers to what we see happening according to this other evidence? Was the law, which has an archaic look about it, a dead letter by the classical era?

This project is a collaborative effort of: prof.dr. Josine Blok; dr. Helle Hochscheid; students of the RM Ancient Studies: Alma Kant, Alexandros Mourtzos.

Researcher

Utrecht University

• dr. Helle Hochscheid
• Alma Kant
• Alexandros Mourtzos.

Citizenship is a crucial concept in the history of ancient Greece and of classical Athens in particular. The project offers a new approach to citizenship in classical Athens, attributing a formative role to religion within the political domain leading to a clarification of female citizenship and a reassessment of the political role of resident immigrants (metics). The project aims at founding a new perception of the political and social structures of classical Athens and of ancient Greece, and at contributing to comparative historical and modern debates on citizenship.
In the present project Athenian citizenship is analyzed as a three-level structure, the connections between the levels showing varying degrees of stringency: 
1. qualification of membership of the group 'citizens'; this depended on descent, exceptions being not infrequent but emphatically exceptions. Citizenship was confirmed and reinstated in religious activities.
2. activities required in order to put membership into practice. Athens created a vast number of religious activities in which only citizens participated, some in which only metics participated and some for both groups (some included slaves). The same pattern of exclusion, inclusion and mixed combinations applies to participation by men and women. 
3. rights and duties following the status acquired by level 1) and 2), comprising of the right to fulfill certain functions. These included religious functions, notably priesthoods, for both men and women, and functions (many, but not all of them secular) in the military and political/administrative domain for men only. Some metics became involved in a number of these functions.

Project Leader & Researcher

NWO grant