NWO Hestia Grant for MACIMIDE researchers Nasrat Sayed and Lillian Tsourdi

Nasrat Sayed and Lillian Tsourdi have been awarded an NWO Hestia grant! This grant will allow Nasrat to join Lillian Tsourdi’s ongoing NWO VENI project and the Law Faculty/IER Department as research associate for 2 years on a 60% basis and to partake in career development activities, including the development of a PhD proposal. For the rest of his allocation, Nasrat will continue to be employed by UNU-MERIT.
Nasrat is an excellent young scholar of public policy with a migration focus who has already published in scholarly journals and undertaken policy work. He is also a resilient and inspiring individual who has managed to rebuild his life and already integrate Dutch academia after fleeing armed conflict in Afghanistan. More on his impressive personal story can be found here.
This will be strengthened by the integration of an excellent public policy scholar into the interdisciplinary project, and about what this grant signifies for diversity and inclusivity in our university, Faculty, and Department: a female scholar from Greece hiring a young scholar from Afghanistan with a refugee background in her project. Dr Tsourdi is proud to witness that such things are possible in the Netherlands and in UM and wants to thank everyone for their support.