NOG PhD Council

The NOG PhD Council is a representative board which organizes events catered specifically to the NOG PhD community. These events can consist of, for instance, seminars or webinars; workshops; symposia; lectures; and reading or writing groups – to which ECTS can be appointed. The Council consists of PhD candidates who represent the NOG members of their respective universities, and who will make an effort to organize events which reflect the interests of their constituencies.

The PhD Council invites any interested NOG PhD members to join the Council. The Council is meant to equally represent each affiliated university, inclusive of all types of PhD candidates. The PhD Council invites NOG PhD members to inform the Council on what events would interest them, by reaching out to the representative of their university. Additionally, the Council offers the possibility to NOG PhD members to organize their own event, for which part of the Council budget can be made available. For instance, if a NOG PhD member is interested in organizing a lecture from a specific professor, or if a member is interested in opening up an existing reading or writing group, they may make use of this opportunity.

Structure

A budget is available for the activities planned by the Council. In addition to organizing PhD-led curricula, members of the NOG PhD Council represent the interests of the NOG PhD community in the NOG Curriculum Board meetings, as well as in the organization of the NOG National Research Day.

The chair and secretary of the Council rotate between each meeting. The role of treasurer and external communications are fixed for the period of one academic year. The division of roles for the academic year 2024-2025 are: Fleur Renkema as chair; Sharon Anyango as secretary; Rana Kuseyri as treasurer; Antonella Buono, Luca Soudant, and Robyn Ausmeier as event organization.

Contact

If you are interested in contacting the NOG PhD Council, please reach out to your university’s representative, or email to nog@uu.nl, with “NOG PhD Council” in the subject line.

Representatives until 2024/2025:

  • Fleur Renkema, representative Utrecht University.

    Fleur Renkema is a PhD candidate at the department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University. Her project aims to write a cultural history of the gay and lesbian left in the Netherlands in the period of 1970-1990. Her research mainly focuses on the ideologies and cultural practices of leftist gay and lesbian activist groups using methods like archival research and oral history. Fleur also fulfills the role of PhD representative in the NOG Curriculum Commission.
    Contact: f.renkema@uu.nl

  • Rana Kuyseri, representative Utrecht University.

    Rana Kuseyri (she/they) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. Her project is tentatively titled, “Data Subjects: Algorithmic Imaginaries and Legal Consciousness of Welfare Recipients in the Dutch Datafied Welfare State.” Seeking to understand the everyday experiences of navigating the digital and datafied welfare state, Rana’s project will do an ethnography of welfare recipients seeking welfare-related support and legal advice in the Netherlands.
    Contact: d.r.kuseyri@uu.nl

  • Robyn Ausmeier, representative Radboud University.

    Robyn Ausmeier is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gender & Diversity at Radboud University. Her research focuses on doing Gender Studies in changing political climates in the Netherlands, examining the particular experiences of educators and researchers working in Gender Studies as well as related fields. The research employs qualitative methods to explore how gender studies practitioners envision their roles as producers and disseminators of (often devalued) knowledge, and how they cultivate spaces of joy and collective resistance amidst increasing backlash against progressive gender politics.
    Contact: robyn.ausmeier@ru.nl

  • Sharon Anyango, representative Maastricht University.

    Sharon Anyango is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), Maastricht University. Her research, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), focusses on evolving gender expectations of East African refugees in the Netherlands.  She specifically looks at Somali and Eritrean refugees who have been in the Netherlands for at least five years, and how they negotiate and construct gender expectations. Her research draws on intersectionality, gender performativity, gender construction and negotiation, and the lifecycle approach as key concepts to understand the complex factors influencing gender negotiation and construction within refugee communities.
    Contact: s.anyango@maastrichtuniversity.nl

  • Luca Soudant, external representative Open University.

    Luca Soudant is doing a PhD at Open University and studies the cultural construction and performativity of gender in the sonic relations humans have with objects in a Western context. They analyze a selection of objects that, in interaction with humans, produce specific sounds, such as tapping high heels and growling motor vehicles. Theoretically, they use queer, posthuman, and sonic materialist theoretical approaches and they apply mixed methodologies such as (auto)ethnography and semiotic analysis.
    Contact: luca.soudant@ou.nl

  • Antonella Buono, representative VU.

    Antonella Buono PhD project conduts a study on the consolatory reading of Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405) at Philosophy department of Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Buono’s research poses a different perspective and aims to bridge the interpretative gap by offering a comprehensive analysis of Christine’s philosophy and highlights the crucial role of freedom and opinion in Christine’s epistemological framework
    Contact: buonoantomariarosaria@gmail.com