In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Leiden University is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. It was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, making it the oldest institution of higher education in the Netherlands.
Erik Peter Verlinde is a Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is the identical twin brother of physicist Herman Verlinde. The Verlinde formula, which is important in conformal field theory and topological field theory, is named after him. His research deals with string theory, gravity, black holes and cosmology. Currently, he works at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam.
Els Goulmy is an eminent professor of transplantation biology, especially regarding minor histocompatibility antigen, at Leiden University. Goulmy is an expert in the area of tissue typing and belongs internationally to the absolute top of her discipline. She was awarded the Spinoza Prize in 2002.
Brian Massumi is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. Massumi's research spans the fields of art, architecture, cultural studies, political theory and philosophy. His work explores the intersection between power, perception, and creativity to develop an approach to thought and social action bridging the aesthetic and political domains. He is a retired professor in the Communications Department of the Université de Montréal.
John Law, is a sociologist and science and technology studies scholar, currently on the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. Law coined the term Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in 1992 when synthesising work done with colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation.
Affect is a concept, used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, that places emphasis on bodily or embodied experience. The word affect takes on a different meaning in psychology and other fields.
Helen Verran is an Australian historian and empirical philosopher of science, primarily working in the Social Studies of Science and Technology (STS), and currently Adjunct Professor at Charles Darwin University.
Hendrik Willem Lenstra Jr. is a Dutch mathematician.
The Spinoza Prize is an annual award of 2.5 million euro prize money, to be spent on new research given by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The award is the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. It is named after the philosopher Baruch de Spinoza.
The Dutch Research Council is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course of Dutch science by means of subsidies and research programmes. NWO promotes quality and innovation in science. NWO is an independent administrative body under the auspices of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. NWO directs its approximate budget of 1 billion euros towards Dutch universities and institutes, often on a project basis. Also, NWO has its own research institutes and facilitates international cooperation. Current president of NWO since April 1, 2021 is Marcel Levi. Former NWO presidents include Stan Gielen, Peter Nijkamp and Jos Engelen.
Izak (Ieke) Moerdijk is a Dutch mathematician, currently working at Utrecht University, who in 2012 won the Spinoza prize.
Renata Salecl is a Slovene philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana, and holds a professorship at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has been a visiting professor at London School of Economics, lecturing on the topic of emotions and law. Every year she lectures at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, on Psychoanalysis and Law, and she has also been teaching courses on neuroscience and law. Since 2012 she has been visiting professor at the Department of Social Science, Heath and Medicine at King's College London. Her books have been translated into fifteen languages. In 2017, she was elected as a member of the Slovene Academy of Science.
Alexander (Lex) Schrijver is a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist, a professor of discrete mathematics and optimization at the University of Amsterdam and a fellow at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam. Since 1993 he has been co-editor in chief of the journal Combinatorica.
Birgit Meyer is a German professor of religious studies at Utrecht University.
Ineke Sluiter is a Dutch classicist and professor of Greek Language and Literature at Leiden University since 1998. Her research focuses on language, literature, and public discourse in classical antiquity. She was a winner of the 2010 Spinoza Prize. Sluiter has been president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since June 2020, and previously served as vice president from 2018 to 2020.
Marjo S. van der Knaap is a Dutch professor of pediatric neurology at VU University Amsterdam and Amsterdam University Medical Centers. She was a winner of the 2008 Spinoza Prize. Her research focuses on white matter disorders.
Michelle Murphy is a Canadian academic. She is a Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto and Director of the Technoscience Research Unit.
Marileen Dogterom is a Dutch biophysicist and professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology. She published in Science, Cell, and Nature and is notable for her research of the cell cytoskeleton. For this research, she was awarded the 2018 Spinoza Prize.
Joyeeta Gupta is an Dutch environmental scientist who is professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, professor of Law and Policy in Water Resources and Environment at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, and co-chair of the Earth Commission, set up by Future Earth and supported by the Global Challenges Foundation. She was co-chair of UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook-6 (2016-2019), published by Cambridge University Press, which was presented to governments participating in the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2019. She is a member of the Amsterdam Global Change Institute. She was awarded the Association of American Publishers PROSE award for Environmental Science and the 2023 Spinoza Prize.
