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Tullio Viola awarded NWO Open Competition XS

Tullio Viola has been awarded an NWO Open Competition XS grant. He will receive €50,000 for his project ‘Folk Narratives and Social Critique: Recovering an Epistemological Paradigm at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’. 

About the project

This project contributes to current debates on the relationship between knowledge and social marginalization by examining how early twentieth-century American thinkers Jane Addams and W.E.B. Du Bois viewed folk narratives (such as myths, songs, and legends) from disenfranchised communities as tools for sense-making and social critique. Through an innovative combination of history of philosophy and the emerging field of the history of knowledge, the project shows how the work of Addams and Du Bois helped redefine what counts as knowledge beyond official or academic domains. In doing so, the project offers fresh insights into the epistemic value of vernacular culture.

About the grant
The SSH Open Competition XS grants are specifically intended to encourage curiosity-driven and innovative research that involves the relatively rapid exploration of a promising idea. 

The characteristics of SSH-XS research are:

  • the proposed research is innovative;
  • it is not certain in advance whether the intended objectives will be achieved;
  • the result of each project contributes to the advancement of existing science and new scientific insights. 

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