Danielle van den Brink

Danielle was nominated by a fellow student and was also recommended by the faculty selection committee and, above all, her supervisor in an exceptionally positive manner. According to the faculty selection committee, even now, as a student, Danielle is already emerging as a notable lecturer and researcher who is passionately engaged in literacy, with the ideal of connecting people when it comes to political, cultural, and historical narratives. This is illustrated by the fact that, in addition to her studies, she is a part-time researcher at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences in Zwolle. This position also allows her to finance her studies in Groningen. She started her studies to become an English teacher in Zwolle and, after graduating (with very high marks), is now focusing on literacy as a researcher at Windesheim. This concerns literacy in the usual sense of the word, as well as digital literacy. She elaborated on this topic in her pitch to the GUF-100 jury, emphasizing that ‘usual’ literacy should actually always precede digital literacy. This is currently hardly ever the case, unfortunately.

Although her research at Windesheim aligns with her current studies at the University of Groningen (the Research Master’s programme in Arts, Media and Literary Studies), here, she is mainly focused on other topics. In this programme, her interest mainly lies in narratology and cultural critique during the Victorian period. She is highly successful both in her research (as a research assistant) and in her teaching (as a teaching assistant). She also continues to achieve very good marks, has taken summer schools in Oxford and Osnabrück (both of which she completed with very high marks), has been accepted for a prestigious research placement in Leiden, and supports her supervisor with all sorts of teaching tasks. She does the latter so well that both her supervisors and students hold her in very high regard. Her research has also been very successful, as she has been invited to present her findings at conferences across the world and has co-authored publications.

In short, Danielle is an excellent and highly motivated student for whom an academic career would be a logical next step.