UYA member Dorothea Gädeke receives Vidi grant worth 800,000 euros

The Dutch Research Council has awarded fifteen experienced, Utrecht-based researchers a Vidi grant worth 800,000 euros. The grant enables them to develop their own innovative line of research and set up their own research group in the coming five years. Utrecht Young Academy member Dorothea Gädeke is one of the grant recipients.

With the grant, the laureates will do research on a variety of subjects including how interactions between plants can help fight climate change, and how lettercraft was used in medieval societies. Eight of the Utrecht-based laureates are researchers at the Faculty of Science, two at the Faculty of Humanities, two at the Faculty of Social Sciences, one at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance, one at UMC Utrecht and one at the Hubrecht Institute.

Can we understand freedom without having experienced unfreedom?

Dorothea’s research project is called Theorizing Freedom From Below. Most theories of freedom focus on the state of being free. But can we fully understand what freedom means without the experience of unfreedom? Her project will investigate how the way in which we think about freedom changes when rethinking freedom from the perspective of people who struggled to become free.