Farewell Berteke Waaldijk: Vrijheid, gelijkheid en gezelligheid. Over stages en academische vrijheid

On 30 September, gender historian and Professor of Taal- en cultuurstudies (TCS) Berteke Waaldijk will bid farewell with her final lecture: 'Vrijheid, gelijkheid en gezelligheid: Over stages en academische vrijheid'.

Academic freedom

Is science so special that it deserves its own freedom? Poets have poetic freedom. Universities have academic freedom. But for whom does this freedom apply? For top researchers, teaching teams, protesting students, for students who want to design their own bachelor's programme?

Practice meets theory

Since the eleventh century, universities have changed character frequently and radically. Waaldijk discusses the tension between the university as a stronghold of scientific research and as an institution that prepares students for professional practices at an academic level. Is the freedom to think, to ask uncomfortable questions, and to doubt all inherited knowledge only applicable to academic research? Or does this powerful yet vulnerable ideal of academic freedom also play a role in preparing for jobs and active citizenship?

In internships - as in community-based research, feminist action research, commissioned research, Community Engaged Learning, and valorisation projects - students develop themselves through the encounter between practice and theory. Internships are therefore the place where academic freedom for the 21st century can be realised.

Berteke Waaldijk

Berteke Waaldijk is a gender historian and Professor of Taal- en cultuurstudies at Utrecht University, specialising in interdisciplinary gender studies and historical research on gender, culture, and citizenship. She publishes on various subjects, including the history of social work, colonial culture and Dutch women's movements. From 2004 to 2022, she coordinated the TCS programme. She is associated with the Graduate Gender Programme in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies.

This lecture is also a lecture in the TCS course ‘Theorie en Praktijk van de geesteswetenschappen’, in which TCS students reflect on the knowledge they have gained in their self-designed bachelor's programme. After the event, there will be a reception at the Utrecht University Hall.

The lecture is in Dutch, but an English translation is available on paper. The lecture is part of the Professor Berteke Waaldijk Afscheidsdag.