In 2020, ITM received two FWO postdoctoral fellowships for three years, with Sara Van Belle and Chiara Trevisan successfully applying. Through this, the Research Foundation of Flanders (FWO) boosts the independent, international careers of local researchers.

The project of Sara Van Belle (on the right) is about understanding the macro-contextual conditions and social mechanisms across informal settlements in Africa (Kampala, Uganda) and Asia (India, Delhi). She will study adolescent girls in informal settlements and slums and their lack of safety.

Chiara Trevisan’s (on the left) research focuses on the use of games and gamified learning to prevent and control foodborne diseases. Children gain knowledge and become aware of risky behaviors and ways of preventing them in a fun way and could turn out to be ambassadors of behavior change. For this multidisciplinary project in an endemic area in Zambia, the pork tapeworm, as number one foodborne parasite, will be used as a model.