I want to thank the jury and everyone at LAVA. This recognition means far more to me than simply support for my research.
The road up until now hasn’t always been easy, and I’ve had many moments of doubt. Times when I wondered if there was a place for me anywhere at all.
Fortunately, I did eventually find that place: where I can be my authentic self and where my way of thinking is not only accepted, but also valued. Where I can contribute as I am. This scholarship therefore feels like further confirmation that I’m not just allowed to exist in the academic world, but that I truly belong there.
Before I say something about my research on the evolution of structure and meaning, I want to thank everyone I’ve met along the way. Far too many to mention all by name, but there are two people I’d like to call out specifically: my supervisors, Piet van den Berg, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at KU Leuven, and Shigeru Miyagawa, Professor of Linguistics at MIT.
Thank you for the opportunity, the trust, and the freedom to pursue my own curiosity.
Last academic year it quickly became clear that my master’s thesis would get a sequel. The many ideas were already in place, but the self-confidence was still nowhere to be found. Thanks to Piet, I eventually overcame my fear, and together with him, I wrote an FWO application for a doctoral grant, even though I was convinced I’d never survive the selection process with my weird academic profile. Now, I can continue for at least another four years. And hopefully much longer.
Thanks to Miyagawa-sensei, I am able to start a research internship in Japan on April 1. He put me in touch with researchers at Osaka University, making it possible for me to join the lab of Professor Takufumi Yanagisawa and work together with the team there to uncover the neurobiological origins of language.
先生方、この貴重な機会をいただき、心より感謝申し上げます。
Part of this research internship is funded by the FWO, my official employer, but thanks to LAVA, I can realize even more of my ambitions in Japan. I hope that I will be able to honour this scholarship and the autistic community.
My research stems from my childlike sense of wonder and curiosity. I wanted to be able to talk to animals so badly, and when I realized that mutual conversations with my hamsters were probably a bit too ambitious, I began to wonder why.
Fast-forward 30 years, I now have the power and the resources to address this question scientifically. As a start, I am studying how structure and meaning emerge in language, both in individual development and in the evolution of our species. Researchers have been working on this for decades, but despite all their efforts – and the many theories that came to exist – we still know surprisingly little. As an educational scientist and evolutionary biologist, I hope to contribute to the debate, with the help of my atypical brain, which refuses to accept any status quo at face value.
As a newly minted evolutionary biologist, I find myself in a somewhat unusual position. My field aims to understand how natural variation arises and how species adapt and evolve. But evolutionary theory may be more widely known for its dark history in which biological concepts were misused to justify social inequality.
This is a prime example of how language, structure, meaning – and therefore also power – are inseparably linked today. Slogans like “survival of the fittest” and the “struggle for life” are more often than not twisted and misused. This then eventually leads to repugnant remarks such as “it’s all natural, that’s how society gets cleaned up”. A sentence that I actually heard someone say when I was waiting in line for my vaccine during the pandemic. Maybe that statement stemmed from the speaker’s deep fear of needles. And maybe it says something about that person’s fitness, rather than the fitness of the people addressed.
Regarding fitness, I want to stress that in evolutionary biology fitness does not mean ‘stronger’ or ‘better’! I hope that I can once and for all dispel that misconception. Being fit means having the ability to adapt, and fitness is largely determined by one’s environment, not merely by an individual’s genes.
The concept of the “struggle for life” may be slightly less famous, but it’s likewise often used to claim that competition and exclusion are natural phenomena. But Darwin emphasized that cooperation and mutual dependence are crucial factors for evolution and for the survival of species.
These two phrases, by the way, were never actually used by Darwin himself. He never wrote of “survival of the fittest”, and the “struggle for life” was an existing economic concept that he borrowed to explain the evolutionary struggle for existence. The misconception that life revolves solely around merciless competition has not only caused historical harm, but continues to influence how we think about success, power, and exclusion.
As an evolutionary biologist, I feel responsible for revealing these distortions and show that evolution, like language, is all about complexity, cooperation, and diversity, NOT a justification for inequality.
Evolution is not a purely competitive process, but a dynamic equilibrium in which species – and here I want to emphasize species as a group, not individuals – adapt to changing conditions. Sometimes that means competition, but just as often, if not more so, it means cooperation. Species don’t survive exclusively through struggle, but primarily through interdependence, within and between species. Think of the flowers and the bees, quite literally: without each other, they would struggle to survive.
Today, we see a strong resistance to policies that focus on diversity and inclusion. Often, this resistance stems from a desperate attempt to preserve a nostalgic ideal that in reality never even existed. But survival is about adaptation and change. Species that can’t adapt go extinct.
And the only path to adaptation is through natural diversity. There is still plenty to learn in biology, but one principle has become very clear and is widely accepted: if diversity disappears, the system collapses. This applies to every level, from genetic diversity to biodiversity, and by extension neurodiversity. If we keep destroying what makes adaptation possible by failing to care for each other and for nature, then we ensure our own extinction.
So far, my research has thought me that in language structure and meaning go hand in hand: structure creates meaning, and meaning creates structure. But what if structure restricts meaning?
Today, I stand here, recognized and celebrated. Yet, something like this is by no means guaranteed. There are countless groups of people around the world who are actively hindered every single day, not only in their careers, but in their very lives. Not because they aren’t good or strong enough, but because systems, structures, and unwritten rules block their path. Because meaning is decided by the majority. Because there isn’t enough budget for inclusion. Because people are afraid of anything different. Because this is “simply the way society works”.
But small changes aren’t actually that difficult to achieve, and don’t even have to cost a thing. At this moment, I have no power, no budget (the money hasn’t been transferred yet), and no policy behind me. But as a human, as a complex biological structure, I can decide that today, right here, I will bend and change one of the unwritten rules. The one minute silence. Normally, we use this time to reflect on past mistakes. But since history keeps repeating itself, and we’re visibly slipping back into a fearful past, I hope it’s clear that only looking back is never enough.
So now I ask you for a minute of silence. Not out of respect for what once was, but to think about what still could be. About the structures that actively exclude people. About the rules we follow blindly without questioning. About the choices we can still make. As a tribute to all the people whose voices are silenced, denying them a full life.
And after that, I don’t want any applause.
I know the norm dictates that you should all clap at the end of my speech, but I don’t want that. I don’t want closure, no moment of self-satisfaction, and no collective sense of relief that the uncomfortable silence has finally come to an end. I want to finish with that discomfort. Because true change only begins when we allow ourselves to feel that discomfort.
kathetgedacht 