Daniëlle Fluks

In the words of the faculty selection committee, Daniëlle is an ‘outstanding example of a student who brings together very diverse disciplines’. With a great deal of inching and pinching she managed, more or less simultaneously and with very impressive marks, to complete seemingly very different Bachelor’s degree programmes: Biology, Dutch Language and Culture, and Philosophy. The unifying factor in these degree programmes has been her interest in the functioning of the brain. She is currently enrolled in a Research Master in Arts, Media & Literary Studies, where she investigates how people use their command - or lack thereof of a language in story-telling. How do we communicate? How do we bring across memories of things we have experienced? In her pitch, she mentioned the example of smell associations that can for example help people recreate the experience of a forest. This kind of high-quality communication is a complex process. Story-telling is not only important in literature, but also in video games, and in the functioning of communities.

Recent health problems have meant that Daniëlle can no longer do everything at once, but her strong drive and intrinsic motivation ensure that she continues to further expand her outstanding interdisciplinary profile in both research and teaching.

Daniëlle has worked as a research assistant at the Teaching Academy Groningen, the Green Office, and the Bachelor’s degree programme in Dutch Language and Culture, and she replaced the permanent lecturer in Linguistics for a period of a few months. She has worked as a research assistant in a number of research projects, and has also taken on a multitude of tasks on a voluntary basis, for example at the Literary Student Association Flanor. Also, she has already published extensively.

Daniëlle gave a well-thought-out pitch on communication, in which she laid a beautiful link between animal and human communication. She also put forward convincing arguments in the discussion with the jury.