Image (from left to right): Indra Römgens, Pam ten Broeke, Carlijn Cober, Lena Richter, Maartje Kouwenberg, Renske Vroom, Helena Cokx & Sanne Tamboer
The Executive Board of Radboud University has awarded Christine Mohrmann grants (known as the Frye stipend until 2015) to promising female PhD candidates since 1990.
Lena Richter – Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies
Lena Richter conducts qualitative research about the experiences of nonbelievers in Morocco and the Moroccan diaspora. Her research explores how the less religious urban youth normalize this taboo topic, by using humour, embracing a ‘liberal’ lifestyle and narrating their experiences on their own terms. The motivation, ability, form and aim of being vocal about one’s deviant views are marked by intersections of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, socioeconomic position, and age. Lena would like to use the stipend to further develop this intersectional approach through a research stay at the gender department of the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, Austria.
Indra Römgens – School of Management
Indra Römgens researches the political economy of tax harmonization in the European Union. Since the year 2000, experts, policy makers and politicians have been negotiating the creation of a single system to tax the profits of transnational corporations in the European Union. Through expert interviews and document analysis, she tries to explain why corporate tax harmonization is being pursued and in whose interest. She will use the stipend to co-organize an international and interdisciplinary conference on EU tax policy that will serve as a founding base for a lasting network of tax scholars. Building bridges between academic disciplines of political science, law and economics, the conference should also provide an excellent opportunity for young scholars to present and develop their work. As such, the conference aims to advance the scientific field and to promote public debate.
Carlijn Cober – Faculty of Arts
Carlijn Cober conducts research into literature and emotion based on the French theoretician Roland Barthes (1915-1980). Based within postcritique (a field within literary studies that centers on the social function of literature), she uses Barthes's theory to describe a method for the interpretation of emotions in literary texts. She also analyzes the affective engagement of theoreticians with literature. Her dissertation aims to establish a theoretical and methodological foundation for affective reading experiences, in order to connect academic and lay readers. She will use the stipend to further develop herself in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, New York.
Annouk Tosserams – Faculty of Medical Sciences
Anouk Tosserams focuses on compensation strategies for gait impairments in Parkinson's disease. These are creative ways that people with Parkinson's often ‘invent’ themselves to improve their gait, for example: walking to the beat of music, bouncing a ball, or skipping. Her PhD project is the first to systematically investigate the effects and underlying mechanisms of these strategies at a large scale. With her stipend, she plans to visit Dr. Sam Stuart (Northumbria University), who also studies gait compensation strategies.
Mariska Schröder – Faculty of Medical Sciences
Mariska Schröder studies the origin of benign tumors that frequently develop in the testes of boys and men with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. These tumors with adrenal-like characteristics may suppress healthy testis tissue, resulting in infertility. Mariska will use this stipendium for a collaborative research project with the University of Edinburgh, where she will study how these tumors arise. Secondly, this stipendium allows her to characterize these tumors in detail on a cellular level, to better understand what these tumors consist of.
Renske Vroom – Faculty of Science
Renske Vroom investigates how water plants can aid the development of wet nature on former agricultural lands. These agricultural soils contain large amounts nutrients from prolonged fertilization, which mobilize to the surface water when rewetted. This leads to poor water quality, low biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions. Fast-growing water plants, such as Azolla, can remove harmful nutrients while generating a valuable product. Renske will use the stipend for research at IGB in Berlin and a visit to multiple experts at Aarhus University.
Helena Cockx – Faculty of Science
The research of Helena Cockx is devoted to freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease, a particularly disturbing symptom during which the feet seemed to be temporary glued to the floor. She aims to deepen the understanding of this unpredictable symptom by using a relatively new mobile brain imaging technique (fNIRS), as well as other wearable sensors like heart rate monitors and motion sensors. Helena will use the stipendium to visit several top research centers in Canada and the USA to discuss her latest work and develop new research ideas.
Maartje Kouwenberg – Faculty of Law
In various ways, technological developments have made life easier. However, these developments also facilitate new manifestations of undesirable behaviour: cybercrime. The research of Maartje Kouwenberg focuses on the criminalization of cybercrime. She aims to answer two questions: When should cybercrime be criminalized? And what should the offences look like? The grant will be used for a research stay in the United States, a frontrunner in criminalizing cybercrime. During the stay, Maartje will focus on the foundation of the criminalization of cybercrime in the United States.
Sanne Tamboer – Faculty of Social Sciences
Sanne Tamboer researches how to stimulate youths (12-15 years old) to critically look at news. In our rapidly changing online world, youths find a lot of information, which is not always produced to inform them correctly and fully. Sanne researches how we can help youths to find what information they can trust and what not. She will use the Mohrmann Stipend to visit experts on youth and news in the US (Medill/Northwestern University).
Pam ten Broeke – Faculty of Social Sciences
When people sit too much and too long, they often experience concentration issues, and they have a higher risk to develop heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Pam investigates where, when, and why people sit for long stretches of time. She hopes to find concrete starting points to help people stand up more often. With the stipend, Pam will visit European experts on sitting, and create knowledge clips for organizations on how to help their employees to stand up more often.