Isaac Roet Prize

Empowering Young People

Every year the Isaac Roet Prize is awarded to a young researcher who offers a solution to a social problem and thereby contributes to a better world. In this event, we present the first two projects that received this prize. Francesca Ranalli helps teenagers build places in their neighbourhoods that make them feel at home. And Anna Bosshard, the winner of 2022, motivates young residents of Amsterdam to reduce their clothing consumption.

Help youth building neighbourhood places- Francesca Ranalli
How teenagers experience their neighbourhood influences their emotional development. Do they feel safe and can they express themselves? Often neighbourhood places reflect the values of adults and not of teenagers. Or they are tuned to young children but not this age group in between. In the Bronx and Almere teenagers worked with researchers, architects and artists to turn this around. Together they worked on environments that do reflect their values and make them feel at home.

Make repair the new cool – Anne Bosshard
Fast fashion is exploding and comes with poor working conditions, increased GHG emissions, and degraded ecosystems. Policy, industry, and consumer efforts are needed for systemic change toward circular clothing consumption. One critical behavior change is that people in high-income countries buy less clothing. Deliberate consumption reduction, or ‘voluntary simiplicity’, also has immediate benefits to consumers, like lower financial stress, more perceptions of being enough, and time for hobbies and friends.

About the speakers

Francesca Ranalli is PhD candidate Urban Planning at the University of Amsterdam and winner of the Isaac Roet Prize 2021, will share the insights and lessons of her project. ‘A key element emerging from my overall research is the importance to build intergenerational spaces of encounter. Everyone agreed that teenagers are an important and understated part of neigbourhood life.’

Anna Bosshard is PhD candidate in Social/Environmental Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, receives the Isaac Roet Prize to organise and evaluate repair workshops that enable and motivate young residents of Amsterdam to reduce their clothing consumption: How to care for clothing and fix what is broken? How to make new combinations with clothes we’ve had for a long time? ‘By giving practical advice in a communal setting, we hope to empower participants that they (and others) don’t need new clothes all the time.’ She will organise these workshops together with the United Repair Centre in Amsterdam of Makers Unite.

Together with the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, the AUF endeavours to award the Isaac Roet Prize every year to a special project that contributes to a better world.