Dear all,
As promised, I intend to write a monthly update on the ups & downs of the research. So here’s February’s report! Some general developments: the Marble project ended and the Premium project, a new student research project on children’s rights, began. The Premium students will be doing research on access to education for undocumented migrants in the Netherlands. I am mentoring this research project, which I initiated together with NGO Defence for Children.
Other than that, February was mostly a month of writing academic articles (I wrote one completely and started two others), and of starting collaborations around sharing the research on the child’s right to nationality.
Ups
- Spending a week in Denmark, having time to completely focus on writing an article. Sent it to a journal at the end of the month. Title: “Wait, What are We Fighting About? – Kelsen, Ehrlich and the Reconciliation of Normative Jurisprudence and Sociology of Law”
- Started collaborative work on two other articles; one with Catalina Goanta on legal orders and blockchain, one with Dorris deVocht on the child/adolescent distinction in Dutch criminal law. So inspiring to work together! (Also I need publications to be able to continue the research I want to do after PhD…)
- Had a very successful PhD event, “PhD stories” organized by my colleague Madalena Narciso. We came up with this idea because we wanted more senior researchers to share their struggles, ups & downs during their PhD.
- Shared the research on child’s right to nationality at Tilburg University and ISS in the Hague. They came up with great ideas, feedback, we established future cooperation, and so lovely to see both Laura van Waas (TiU) and Jan Pronk (ISS) again!
- Made good progress on the proposal for a “Maastricht Platform for Community-Engaged Research”. Added a few new people to the working group – which is definitely looking like an A-team now :-)!
Downs
- The video of my Pecha Kucha talk “Going Back, Sharing Research, Making a Difference?” was published online. Not sure if I’m happy with the result – looks like I wanted to say too much in too little time.
- Premium project had a difficult start; one student dropped out before we first met due to personal issues, another fainted several times during our first meeting and had to be picked up by an ambulance. The difficulty is that these talented students do the project in addition to their normal courses, for which they also want to get the best grades. So it gives them a lot of stress. I told the people who selected the students, that maybe they should take mental health in consideration more when selecting. They told me as a mentor I should give them more trust…
Selfie with Prof. Dr. Jan Pronk (also former minister/UN special servant)
Clearly, February was a good month!
