In 2024–2025, Adrita Mitra, then a DPhil candidate in History at the University of Oxford, was awarded a Wiener-Anspach fellowship to undertake a research stay at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Under the supervision of Professor Amandine Lauro, a member of the research group Atelier Genre(s) et Sexualité(s) of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, and herself a former Wiener-Anspach fellow, Adrita Mitra was able to pursue the research for her doctoral dissertation, Hope, Horror and Humanitarianism in the Congo Basin, c. 1880–1908, which she defended with no corrections in Spring 2026.

As she explains, “the fellowship introduced me to scholars whose insights and generosity shaped the direction of my thinking in lasting ways. During this time, my French improved significantly, and I also gained very basic familiarity with Dutch. This linguistic expansion opened up bodies of scholarship and archival material that would otherwise have remained inaccessible, and it brought me into conversation with new intellectual communities”.

Adrita Mitra adds that her time in Belgium proved foundational to her research in ways she had not fully anticipated: “At the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, I met with researchers, engaged closely with its collections, and encountered art and material culture that deepened and complicated my understanding of the histories I was tracing.  A visit to Antwerp proved particularly significant: the Brabo fountain, just outside the train station, became the image with which my thesis opens. My thesis emerged not from the archive, but from the experience of being present in a place where history remains materially visible”.

Kostia Lennes with Jean-Benoit Pilet, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences (Brussels, 28 May 2026).

Kostia Lennes, who holds a joint PhD in Political and Social Sciences (ULB) and Sociology (Université Paris Cité), is currently a Wiener-Anspach Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Under the supervision of Dr Shannon Philip (Department of Sociology), he is carrying out a research project on “Ageing on dating platforms: The social and intimate relationships of older gay men in the digital age”.

In March, Dr Lennes was awarded the 2026 Alice Seghers Prize for his doctoral dissertation, defended at the ULB in 2024 and titled “La valeur des relations. Arrangements intimes entre travailleurs du sexe et clients dans le contexte de l’escorting masculin sur Internet (Paris, France)” (The Value of Relationships: Intimate Arrangements Between Sex Workers and Clients in the Context of Male Internet Escorting – Paris, France). The prize is awarded by the ULB’s Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences to doctoral dissertations in sociology or law that contribute to advancing the well-being of individuals in society.

Kostia Lennes’s dissertation offers “a socio-anthropological study of exchanges between male escorts and their clients. By considering these relationships as simultaneously sexual and intimate, as well as social and economic, this research shows how escorts and clients attribute specific meanings to sexuality, intimacy, and the obligations that bind them together”. The dissertation is available on the HAL Theses portal.

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