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Veni grant awarded to Marie-Catherine Petersmann

Published: 11th April 2022 Last updated: 11th April 2022

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded four young promising scientists from Tilburg University a Veni grant worth up to 280,000 euros, and Marie-Catherine Petersman of Public Law & Govenance is one of them. Her research project concerns 'anthropocene legalities’.

Dr. Marie-Catherine Petersmann will investigate how new legal rules and concepts can displace the anthropocentrism of modern law:

Anthropocene Legalities: Reconfiguring Legal Relations With/in More-than-Human Worlds

The Anthropocene demands a recognition of how nonhumans (from CO2 to coronaviruses) actively participate in social life. How can legal rules and concepts capture this shared human-nonhuman agency and co-existence? To displace the anthropocentrism of modern law, this project develops ‘Anthropocene legalities’ to enact response-abilities to care in more-than-human worlds.

This project forms part of the signature plan Global Law & Governance, aimed at way institutions, networks, organizations and professionals in law and governance deal with fundamental challenges like, for instance, climate change, creeping crises and destructive conflicts.

Veni, together with Vidi and Vici, is part of the NWO Talent Program aimed at excellent researchers who have recently obtained their doctorates. See the NWO press release here.