Scholarshipholders 2025-2026, Winter cohort

Here are the scholarshipholders of 2025-2026 listed.

Scholarshipholder for postdoctoral research

César Reigosa Soler

My project investigates Thomas Aquinas’s account of ‘sins of speech’ in the Summa Theologiae (II–II, qq.72–76) with an eye to contemporary speech act theory and recent work on hate speech. At the heart of the project lies the question of how can words effect change in the world. Such changes include producing harm, eliciting emotions and establishing rules that govern individuals. By looking into classical rhetorical theory, twentieth-century speech act theory (J. L. Austin and John Searle), and Rae Langton’s account of hate speech, the project aims to assess the historical and philosophical significance of Aquinas’s views on the performativity and morality of language.

Scholarshipholder for preparing a postdoctoral project

Anna Meens

I am an archaeologist who is at KNIR to prepare a postdoctoral project that will use the architectural remains of farmsteads to gain insights in the identity and organization of farmers who lived and worked in Greek areas. I am developing a digital comparative approach highlighting the adaptability of farming communities in different countrysides and tracing chronological developments and regional trajectories in ancient farming practices. After focusing on farmstead sites in Greece for my PhD at the University of Amsterdam, it was time to familiarize myself with farmsteads documented in Magna Graecia. My stay at KNIR is the ideal starting point to get acquainted with this archaeological evidence in the many research libraries in Rome.

Scholarshipholder for PhD research

Ren Ewart

My thesis project critically examines histories and practices of needlework repair to understand the ethical and political significance of mending across museum and cultural contexts. The project is divided into three distinct yet overlapping parts, addressing needlework repair as (1) a site of cultural heritage that crosses the tangible and the intangible; (2) an embodied conservation practice; and (3) a space of experimental and participatory pedagogy. Through archival and ethnographic research, the project aims to centre histories and processes of maintenance and care-work that remain hidden or neglected in production-oriented approaches to renewal. Drawing together artistic research, critical heritage and conservation ethnography, the project considers the different ways in which specific mending practices intersect with broader networks of repair to sustain objects, institutions, and social relations. Most prominently, it asks how can needlework mending re-frame understandings of repair, care, and maintenance within and beyond the museum?

Scholarshipholders for preparing a PhD research

Julia Kok

My research is focused on women in confraternities for northerners in sixteenth-century Italy. While confraternities are generally known to have been societies for the male lay, scholars are starting to have more attention for the role of women. As the associations played a central role in late medieval and premodern society, this forms a relevant contribution to gender history. However, much is still to be explored. My research in Rome, then, is centred around the question: how did women and gender relations play a role in confraternities for northerners in sixteenth-century Rome? This research will be the foundation for a PhD proposal, in which I will present my research on both Florence and Rome, and propose a more in-depth study of the meaning of gender in confraternity life.

Iris Verbiesen

As part of the Tappino Area Archaeological Project (TAAP), run by the KNIR and CeDISA Jelsi in Molise, my research aims to better understand the functions of Roman villas in the southern Apennines. Contrary to the coastal zones in Latium, Etruria, and Campania, this remote, mountainous zone has been largely overlooked: only a few villas have been excavated, and others are known only from low-resolution data produced by large-scale surveys. Moreover, the rugged terrain has caused limited access to sites, obstructing further investigation. Nonetheless, what little information we have on mountain villas suggests rather humble and small-scale enterprises compared to their counterparts in the well-researched areas of Roman Italy. By combining historical models with landscape archaeology, I will analyse how villa systems worked in mountain economies and communities. To this end, I will use detailed archaeological data from newly discovered sites, which will be retrieved by several new methods that are suitable for this fragmented landscape and do not require excavation. This entails field survey and remote sensing, the latter including drone photography and georesistivity, among others. During my stay at the KNIR, I will focus on my theoretical framework, and prepare exploratory fieldwork that will take place on selected sites during the KNIR remote sensing practicum in Molise later this Spring.

Scholarshipholders for (R)MA research

Anouk de Bruin

The hearth served as a crucial element for human survival in the past: it provided a means of preparing food, maintaining warmth, and illuminating darkness. In Roman religion, the hearth is often represented by Vesta, whose temple on the Forum housed the sacred hearth of the empire. Interestingly, images and references to Vesta are lacking in the more practical context of hearths. During my time at KNIR, I am researching this particular aspect of the hearth cult of the Roman Empire: the religion of kitchens. Based on archaeological data, literary sources and cultural anthropological approaches, I will examine hearth-related rituals and the domestic deities of early Imperial Italy and will attempt to reconstruct the daily functions and the roles of the kitchen and those working in it.

Nina Manola Čoholić

My research explores printers’ devices in late 16th-century Venice, one of the most important centres of book production in early modern Europe. Printers’ devices, small visual marks placed on title pages or in colophons, were traditionally understood as practical signs of identification and proof of quality within the book market. For this reason, scholarship has tended to treat them primarily as commercial and institutional markers, often giving limited attention to the interpretative possibilities they offer.
My project asks whether printers’ devices could function not only as marks of commerce but also as discreet visual statements through which printers articulated position, affiliation, or belief.