Rubicon award for Ward Berenschot

10 juli 2009

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded a Rubicon grant to 34 young, highly promising scientists. One of the award winners is former WOTRO-sponsored researcher dr Ward Berenschot. He received an award for his project ‘Patronage networks as an infrastructure for ethnic violence ’. This project shall investigate the extent to which mobilisation for violence in Sulawesi (Indonesia) was made possible by the everyday manner in which political leaders helped people to gain access to the government.

In January WOTRO-sponsored researcher Ward Berenschot received a PhD with distinction from the University of Amsterdam for his research on Communal Violence and State-Society Mediation in Gujarat, India. He discussed why and how political actors were capable of instigating and organizing mass violence. On the basis of a detailed ethnographic study of local politics in Gujarat's main city Ahmedabad, Berenschot argued that the difficulties that especially poorer citizens face when dealing with state institutions underlie the capacity and interests of political actors to instigate and organize communal rioting.

The objective of the Rubicon grant is to further stimulate the circulation of knowledge. The candidates are receiving the grant for several reasons. The most important of these are the quality of the research proposal, the researcher and the host institute respectively. The feasibility of the research and the mobility of the researcher also play a role in the assessment.