When I saw that the long-awaited notification email from the European Commission started with “Congratulations…”, I almost couldn’t believe it: I was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship for my project “Hacking your way to IT literacy”. I will investigate what digital societies can – and need to – learn from digital learning in UK hackerspaces. By now, the grant agreement has been signed and I am thrilled to start the fellowship at University of Sussex, Brighton.

This would have been impossible without the fantastic supervision of Tim Jordan (Sussex). Special thanks go to him – and I would also like to thank those people from Sussex and Maastricht University who commented on earlier versions of the proposal, helped me navigate the application process and encouraged me to resubmit the proposal when my first application was not successful. I am immensely grateful for all the support I received. Also, the reviewers’ detailed feedback was extremely helpful for revising my proposal. If you are preparing an MCIF proposal this year – stay posted: I will write another post on the reviewers’ feedback soon, since it helped me a lot to understand what reviewers are looking for and how they evaluate proposals.

While I could not be happier about this chance to focus on my research and to acquire new skills, I regret having to leave Maastricht for two years: it is an amazing place to work and live. I will really miss working with my colleagues from the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences and other UM faculties, and I look forward to returning in 2021!