Iris will be based at FRT (Beliefs and Practices) and has started her work on June 1st. Her term will continue to December 2021. Iris Veerbeek recently wrote an excellent MA thesis on the added value of the use of religious resources in Dutch ‘citizenship education’ (‘burgerschapsvorming’) for enhancing reflection on ecology. The fellowship will enable her to acquire the necessary resources for the pursuit of a doctoral project and to develop into a competitive candidate for PhD-positions. Veerbeek is an alumna of our Faculty. She interrupted her studies at FRT for an academic year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she specialized in the interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Judaism. After that, she finished our Master programme Building Interreligious Relations (2021).
PhD research
In her prospected PhD-research she will explore how religious communities in a post-secular society can engage in and contribute to the public debate on ecology and climate change. During the period of her Fellowship, she will develop a research proposal and write a scholarly article based on her masters thesis. Also, she will prepare an application for getting external funding for her PhD-project. Veerbeek will be supervised by prof. Peter-Ben Smit.
Ethics of the Anthropocene Programme
The Ethics of the Anthropocene Programme is a joint initiative of FRT and IVM in which each year one or more temporary scholars are appointed. Its trustees are VU-professors Philipp Pattberg (IVM) and Gijsbert van den Brink (FRT). Alternately a Senior Fellow and one or more Junior Fellows are eligible. After having had prof. Pim Martens as last year’s Senior Fellow, we now welcome Iris as our new Junior Fellow. Previous Fellows included prof. Ernst Conradie (Senior) and Eva van Urk MA (Junior). The Programme is aimed at investigating the societal relevance of world-view traditions for addressing environmental issues.