NWO subsidies for digital revolutions and black photography

Four Leiden professors have been awarded almost a million euros to spend on research. There are two pairs of researchers: Peter Pels (anthropology) and Chris Goto-Jones (Japanese), and Patricia Spyer (anthropology) and Robert Ross (history). Each pair will receive € 450,000 from NWO's Cultural Dynamics Programme.

Peter Pels and Patricia Spyer

Peter Pels and Chris Goto-Jones: comparing digital revolutions

Professor Peter Pels (Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology) and co-applicant Professor Chris Goto-Jones have been awarded a subsidy of € 450,000 from NWO for their research on The Future is Elsewhere: Toward a Comparative History of the Futures of the Digital (R)evolution. The subsidy has been awarded in the context of the Cultural Dynamics programme.

The subsidy will be used to:

• appoint a PhD researcher to investigate the development of significant digital environments in South-East Asia;
• appoint a postdoc to review feminist ideals and the practice of digital teaching in the United States and the Netherlands;
• fund a 0.5 fte senior researcher to complete a study into imaging the future in European and American science fiction.

Book

Pels and Goto-Jones are combining the key focus of their research - images of the future and their social/political role in development - in a joint publication, to be published in 2014. Goto-Jones has already been awarded a VICI grant for comparative research into science fiction and the development of digital media in Japan.

Patricia Spyer and Robert Ross: black photography in South Africa

Professor Patricia Spyer and Professor Robert Ross (Humanities) have been awarded a subsidy by NWO, also of € 450,000 for their project entitled Photographic Traditions in Black Popular Modernities: Towards a Socio-historical analysis of the visual economy in and beyond South Africa, also in the context of the Cultural Dynamics programme. 

The project comprises two PhD research studies.  One focuses on amateur photography in South African townships and its relation to increasing consumption and urbanisation, and the other investigates the role of Zulu portrait photography in building a Zulu-ethnic identity.  

Not part of the canon

An important aim of the project is to contribute to the process of creating an archive as part of the post-apartheid period in South Africa. This will be achieved by ensuring that photos that are not in the national canon are archived. The aim is to organise a history workshop and travelling exhibition on amateur photographic material. 

(17 November 2009)