Featured Fellow: Dr Annette Freyberg-Inan

Dr Annette Freyberg-Inan was an IASH-SSPS Fellow from May – June 2015. At her home institution, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam, she is Associate Professor and teaches in the fields of International/World Politics, European Politics, Political Theory, Political Psychology, and Social Science Methodology. (You can find her profile on UVA’s website here.)

A transcript for this video is available here.

We caught up with Dr Freyberg-Inan via email to find out what she’s been up to since she left IASH last year:

“The atmosphere at IASH was one of curiosity and compassion regarding each other’s work and efforts to learn, yet also more broadly curiosity and compassion for human beings and for humanity. This made me reflect on what unites all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences at their best: they deeply care about people and their being in the world, the marks they leave and the marks that are left on them. I remembered then that this was what brought me to my fields of study in the first place, some 30 years ago. And I was reminded of how privileged I am to be able to spend my days in such company.

“As scholars and teachers we have the immense privilege to be surrounded by ideas which inspire us, to walk among them and to pick and choose, by knowledge which guides us and grant us authority, and by others who can understand and support our intellectual quests and emotional travails. We have students who look up to us and want to learn. We are allowed to teach them, to shape their minds and lives. We get paid to read and write. And we have colleagues like the people I met at IASH, who bring a smile to my face still when I think of them.

“Today, almost a year after I left Edinburgh, I am squeezed between teaching international politics, globalization, and political resistance, writing about EU-Turkey relations, anti-austerity protests, and the relevance of international institutions, and the not inconsiderable rest of my life. But I am still benefitting from my time at IASH. I took away from there much inspiration for my work on the social psychology of international politics, a project which will keep me busy for years to come. I also took away from it renewed determination to fight against the threats to education and research coming from marketization and new public management. I believe that is what we need to do, and IASH helped by reminding me what it is we are defending. I think of Alexander von Humboldt, of John Dewey, of John Kenneth Galbraith – who truly understood the value of both education and of passing it on to others to make a difference. I want to take on the challenge of connecting the deep reflection, the withdrawal into thought that is made possible by oases like IASH, with scholar activism. Of building and maintaining that bridge between our minds and the world. That is what we owe to society, to all the others who so inspire and support us along the way, and to ourselves.”

Do you want to know more about how to become an IASH fellow? Since its inception in 1969, IASH has hosted over 1,000 fellows. Currently, we have 23 fellows with us.