For those of you who have followed my financial plan for the research (see: this video), there is some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that in addition to the latest crowdfunding, through other means (mostly teaching) I have now raised an additional € 45.000 – so the fundraising is going strong!
The bad news is that Tilburg University has changed their plans for PhD scholarship students. Their idea was to pilot a program where PhDs are allowed to be students instead of employees (a construction that saves a LOT of money). I would participate in this pilot. However, now they decided to cancel these plans. As a consequence, I would have to raise more than 2x as much money as foreseen, as a PhD employee contract is much more expensive (mostly due to taxes and social security fees).
Of course I do not want to transfer about 60% of donations coming in to the tax office, so I am looking for alternative solutions. The best so far is to cooperate with another academic institution, which I am hoping to be the ISS in the Hague (see their website). This institution, the home base of my second supervisor Prof. Dr. Jan Pronk, is an amazing institution that in addition to academic quality values highly engagement in public debate. In this sense it therefore perfectly suits my research project and I would be lucky to work with them.
The difficult part is that ISS sets very high standards for their PhD students. So I again have to go through a process of application, re-write my research proposal, collect references, take an English (TOEFL) test. Secondly, to work at ISS I will need a new first professor (as Prof. Pronk is an emeritus professor). To this purpose, I have been in contact with prof. Karin Arts, a specialist on children’s rights who – thank god – is interested in my project.
So for the coming period there are some hurdles to take, starting with the TOEFL test which I am taking this saturday. I am studying like crazy right now, as I have to score >100 to even be considered as a PhD candidate at the ISS… Fingers crossed!
