Veni grants for Jeroen Dera and Lieke Stoffelsma

The Dutch Research Council (NOW) has awarded a Veni grant to fourteen young researchers of the Radboud University and the Radboud university medical center. At the Faculty of Arts Jeroen Dera (RICH) and Lieke Stoffelsma (CLS) receive the grant.

With this grant of up to 250.000 euro they can further elaborate their own ideas during a period of three years.

Jeroen Dera is awarded the grant for the project ‘Uses of Literature in the Classroom: Legitimizing Literature in Upper-Secondary Education. With the project he will investigate how the value of literature is negotiated in upper-secondary education, integrating three perspectives that are often studied in isolation: (1) teachers’ beliefs about the uses of literature, (2) teachers’ didactic practices, and (3) adolescents’ literature conceptions.

Lieke Stoffelsma receives a Veni for research on the English reading comprehension of primary school children in Ghana, South Africa and Hong Kong. Many primary school children in non-Western countries are taught in English, but speak a different language at home. Reading comprehension in English is often difficult for them. Stoffelsma’s will study which factors (including native language and word knowledge) predict the English reading skills of these children, and how this knowledge can be used in new teaching methods.

Veni is aimed at excellent researchers who recently obtained their doctorate. Together with Vidi and Vici, Veni is part of the NWO Talent Programme, and is awarded every year. A total of 1127 researchers submitted a proposal for this round, of which 162 have now been awarded in the Netherlands. Fourteen of these are going to researchers of Radboud University and the Radboud university medical center.