Granted projects

Open Competition SSH XS

  • Granted projects 2023 Round 4

    Are men allowed to be more selfish than women? Perception and approval of gender differences in self-interested motives and behavior
    dr. H. Aaldering (V), VU Amsterdam

    Men have higher salaries than women, and are more likely to be in leadership positions- gender differences that cannot be explained by abilities. I will investigate whether gender differences in expectations and approval of self-interest contribute to this gap. Specifically, this research will discover whether individuals approve of self-interest more in men than in women in the domains of leadership, negotiations, and intra-organizational volunteering. The findings have the potential to change traditional thinking in different disciplines and research areas, such as granting high salaries, selecting negotiators or leaders, and asking for volunteers in organisations.

    Between a rock and a hard place: How do Indigenous young adults make sense of global climate change?
    dr. M.M. Bayrak (M), Utrecht University

    Indigenous peoples are severely affected by the adverse effects of climate change. Ample evidence shows that Indigenous peoples' traditional ecological knowledge systems have contributed to successful climate change adaptation. Still, studies have often overlooked the younger generations who serve a bridge function between their elders and mainstream society through knowledge transformation. By taking Taiwanese Indigenous communities as a case, this project focuses on how Indigenous young adults perceive climate change and investigates their aspirations on how current and future community adaptation pathways should be shaped in a bottom-up and participatory manner.

    From brain to behavior: cascading effects of early brain, cognitive and motor development on language ability in children born extremely preterm
    dr. T.D. Boerma (V), Utrecht University

    Prematurity is associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes, including persistent difficulties learning language. It is highly challenging to determine at an early age which preterm children are most at risk for language impairment. To break ground, this project adopts an innovative, integrative approach to (impaired) language development, relating detailed linguistic error profiles of school-aged children born preterm to early brain, cognitive and motor development. The results of this study on developmental cascades from brain to behavior will elucidate why children develop language difficulties, allowing for their early identification and the timely start of interventions.

    Youth mental health at risk: testing the role of accelerated biological maturation, poverty, and sex on internalizing problems
    dr. M.G.N. Bos (V), Leiden University

    Mental well-being of youth is a serious concern in current society. Across adolescence, there is a dramatic increase in internalizing problems, including anxiety and depression and strikingly, girls have two to three-fold higher risk to develop such psychopathology. Combining two longitudinal datasets, this project will test the innovative hypotheses that accelerated biological maturation is a key mechanistic pathway leading to internalizing problems, and that this pathway is moderated by sex and poverty. Understanding the joint contribution of biological and contextual factors leading to internalizing problems will provide the highly needed building blocks to substantially optimize prevention and intervention programs.

    Restoring Trust in Journalism: A Cross-Country Investigation into the Impact of Journalistic Repair Strategies
    dr. M. Boukes (M), University of Amsterdam

    Declining trust in the news media is a growing concern for the journalism industry—and also for the proper functioning of democracy. To restore public trust in journalism, paradigm repair strategies have been developed; most notably, fact-checking and explicit journalistic transparency. However, the effectiveness of these strategies is still unknown. A synchronized experiment will be conducted in 14 countries to cross-nationally validate a sophisticated measurement instrument for the media trust concept (WP1) and to investigate the causal relationship between exposure to journalistic repair strategies and public media trust (WP2). Thereby, this project provides evidence-based recommendations to scholars and media professionals.

    MovieMagic: A novel diagnostic test for visual impairments following brain damage
    dr. A.F. ten Brink (V), Utrecht University

    Visual impairments following brain damage are often difficult to diagnose because of unreliable tests. As a result, proper treatment cannot be started. This reduces the well-being, daily functioning, and development of patients. This project investigates a new, objective, and fun diagnostic test in which no explicit responses are needed, making results more reliable. Patients watch entertaining videos while pupil sizes are measured with an eye-tracker. Objects that are not perceived will elicit weaker pupil responses. Smart mathematical models can quickly map the sensitivity of the visual field. This improves patient screening and provides fundamental insights into how visual perception works.

    Media Panics of the Past. New Media and the Challenge to Democracy in Western Europe, 1890-1990
    dr. P. Corduwener (M), Utrecht University

    New media are often believed to pose a major threat to today’s democracies. But today’s concerns are far from new. Over the course of the past century ever ‘newer’ media posed challenges to democracy. This project studies how societies responded to these challenges by translating fears for new media into institutional reforms to protect democracy. It investigates three concrete cases of institutional reforms that responded to the breakthrough of new media of their day: mass newspapers in France at the end of the nineteenth century; radio in the Netherlands in the 1920s; and commercial television in Italy in the 1980s.

    Educational success and language impairment in children with paediatric posterior fossa tumours (ESLI-PPFTs)
    dr. V.M. Correia de Aguiar (V), University of Groningen

    Children treated for tumours in the posterior fossa show long-term language and cognitive impairments, together with poor school performance. Other populations with language disorders have particular difficulties with learning foreign languages, but this is not documented for posterior fossa tumour survivors. In this study we will document foreign language learning achievement in such patients (aim 1). Critically, we will attempt to find explanations for language learning difficulties by studying them in relation to spoken and written language skills (aim 2) and the integrity of brain regions which may be damaged by radio- and chemotherapy (aim 3).

    Innovation in Ship Design in the Age of Sail: A Digital Approach
    dr. L.S. Costiner (V), Utrecht University

    The Age of Sail saw significant innovations in ship design, which greatly increased European nations' ability to explore, compete, and trade globally. However, historians lack evidence to assess the performance of these vessels. This project aims to develop a new methodology to rigorously study technological innovation in ship design across time, taking as comparison Dutch and British ships of the eighteenth century. By combining historical analysis with 3D scanning techniques and engineering simulations, the study pioneers a new methodology for the study of the historical past and provides insights into one of the most innovative periods in navigation history.

    Sustainability without borders - connect distant production and consumption with SmartAvocado
    dr. Y. Dou (V), University of Twente

    Food today is often produced thousands of miles away from where it is consumed, making it challenging to track the farm origin and routes. Current norms in science are using country origins and national aggregates, oversimplifying the environmental impacts that can vary 50-fold across farms. This pilot aims to develop a monitoring system to track avocados, an imported, water-hungry product using the latest Internet-of-Things technologies. This will provide an unprecedented high-resolution map of food flows, enabling better environmental assessment and optimized transport routes. The ultimate aim is to encourage sustainable consumer behaviors and business models to govern sustainable food trade.

    DisLex – Analysing the Features of Disaster Law Through Computational Text Analysis Methods
    dr. C.E. Egger (V), Erasmus University Rotterdam

    Strengthening the resilience of our societies to disasters is a priority global goal. Key to such agenda is legal preparedness, namely the adoption of disaster law that organizes effective disaster response while safeguarding human rights and democratic governance. Despite international guidelines on how to best design such law, little is known about the quality of disaster law worldwide. DisLex fills this gap by using computational text analysis methods to create the first dataset comparing the features of disaster law in 100 countries over 10 years (2013-2023). DisLex opens new research avenues on the impact of legal preparedness on disaster resilience.

    Social Networks and Misperceptions
    dr. V.C. Frey (M), University of Groningen

    People often have biased perceptions of social reality: They err about the prevalence of certain behaviours and opinions in the community and they even hold wrong ideas about their friends. Such misperceptions can have deleterious consequences. For instance, young adolescents who overestimate the alcohol consumption of their peers are likely to increase their own alcohol consumption. Hitherto, we know little about the processes that lead to such misperceptions and, consequently, we lack important knowledge to develop interventions to prevent or correct them. This project addresses this knowledge gap by examining how the flow of information in social networks affects misperceptions.

    New perspectives on English in Scotland: Exploring the language of the lower classes in the nineteenth century
    dr. M.S. Gordon (V), Leiden University

    Traditional histories of English primarily focus on the development of written Standard English in England. Moreover, due to the social stratification of literacy, the “standard” history is largely based on materials that reflect the language of higher classes. This project aims to adjust the traditional view by (1) shifting the focus to Standard English in Scotland and (2) exploring the hitherto underexposed role of the lower classes in shaping a unique variety of (written) Standard English in Scotland. This will be achieved by making available and studying unique lower-class material in the form of pauper letters from the nineteenth century.

    Connecting work automation to everyday environmental care: the case of fish farming
    dr. F. Grommé (V), Erasmus University Rotterdam

    Farmers are automating care of animals and their habitats, for instance, by predicting and automating feeding. But how does workplace automation influence agrifood workers’ experienced responsibilities for animals and their environment (‘environmental care practices’). Qualitative research at two high-tech fish farms will answer this question, with the aim of establishing an innovative, interdisciplinary research line in work organisation research. The ground-breaking aspect is that fish farms potentially make visible the effects of automation on relations between workers, animals and habitats, instead of focusing on human autonomy. The results can support technology design and contribute to policy debates about farming reforms.

    Picture perfect? Predicting Psychological Resilience in Youth by Machine Learning
    dr. V.E. Heininga (V), University of Groningen

    Up to 50% of Dutch youth (aged 16-30) experience psychological problems such as anxiety and depressive symptoms, and suicide is the leading cause of death among Dutch youth. In this longitudinal experience sampling study, we will investigate to what extent risk factors and protective factors for psychological problems can be derived from photos shared on social media. We will apply scraping techniques and Machine Learning to extract facial expressions from photos - as well as relevant contextual factors (e.g., being with friends) - and test whether these factors can be used to predict youth’s resilience or vulnerability to psychological problems.

    Don’t forget the milk: Virtual Reality based Memory Training for Remembering Intentions in Older Adults
    dr. A. Hering (V), Tilburg University

    Researchers have found that up to 70% of our daily memory problems are related to forgetting previously set goals, such as forgetting to buy milk on the way home. This kind of memory is called Prospective Memory and it is highly important for everyday wellbeing and to keep people functioning as independently as possible in their lives. In this project, a new Virtual Reality environment called Virtual Day is being developed that simulates real life with different daily goals to perform. Furthermore, Virtual Day is used in an intervention study to improve prospective memory of older adults.

    The shy brain: Measuring neural correlates of shyness during social interaction.
    dr. M. Hilton (M), Maastricht University

    Shy people feel uncomfortable and inhibited in novel social situations, but little is known about the neural processes that underlie these shy feelings, as common methods such as EEG and fMRI are incompatible with live social interaction. Recent works shows that fNIRS can successfully be used to record brain activity during conversations. Hence, the proposed study will construct and test a new fNIRS paradigm to identify and probe neural and cognitive drivers of shyness. This will open up possibilities to better trace the developmental origins of shyness, and to find new routes to support shy people in combatting their shyness.

    (Un)intended Fatherhood and Paternal Involvement
    dr. M.D. Hilverda (V), Erasmus University Rotterdam

    Paternal involvement during preconception, pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare is key. However, little research focusses on fathers specifically, especially in case of unintended pregnancies. That is why factors that enable or hinder men in paternal involvement in childcare are largely unknown. This research taps into this gap by using a mixed-methods design to examine the difference in paternal involvement between men who unintendedly and intendedly become fathers. Moreover, we will examine possible factors that might explain why some men are more successful in taking up their role as father compared to others.

    Recording under scrutiny: Dissecting disagreements over recording devices in encounters between police and bystanders
    dr. E.M. Hoey (M), VU Amsterdam

    While the ubiquity of recording devices has transformed modern policing into a 'high visibility' occupation, the police lack training on how to manage civilians recording them, leading to negative impacts on their situational awareness. This research will examine how police officers and bystanders act upon the presence of recording devices in police-bystander interactions. I will analyze recordings of real encounters where such devices are made salient, examining how officers productively respond to recording bystanders. This fundamental research will contribute to our understanding of policing in the video age and inform evidence-based training, guidance, and policy.

    What should we do with the bodies? Handling donated bodies in Dutch academic hospitals, 1970–2020
    dr. H.M. Huistra (V), Utrecht University

    If someone donates their body to science, does that mean the army or car manufacturers can experiment on it too? Dutch academic hospitals receive around 650 body donations each year. Yet, although the donation process itself is clearly regulated, guidelines for how these bodies can and cannot be used after donation are absent. To develop these much-needed guidelines, we require insight into the moral dilemmas that emerge in the handling of donated bodies. This project provides this insight by studying the recent history of handling donated bodies in Dutch academic hospitals with the methodology of witness seminars.

    China in the Balkans in a Soon-to-Be Displaced Serbian Village
    dr. D. Jovanovic (V), Utrecht University

    This research explores the impact of Chinese investments in the Balkans, driven by the Belt and Road Initiative. The study explores experiences of transformations of everyday day life in a Serbian village caused by rapidly expanding open-cast copper mines, recently taken over by one of the world-leading Chinese copper and gold companies. The project also studies if and how experiences of disturbance and prospective relocation of the village are worsening social inequalities. This is the first ethnographic study to help us understand the social impact of such rapid transformations at Europe's periphery caused by the presence of global Chinese investments.

    What is ‘an alcohol problem’? Mapping the epistemic landscape of alcohol research
    dr. S.J. Jukola (V), University of Twente

    Science-based interventions to reduce alcohol-related harms are urgently needed. Yet there is no consensus about how to identify problematic alcohol use. Research to alcohol use is pervaded by partially conflicting conceptualizations, definitions, and operationalizations, which leads to tensions and conflicts in interdisciplinary collaboration, policy-making, and clinical practice. This exploratory philosophy of science project provides a mapping of conceptualizations in and the epistemological landscape of alcohol research. It thus aims at increasing our understanding of the conceptual and epistemological sources of conflicts in alcohol research and policy.

    Buying into crypto: investigating the socio-cultural conditions of cryptocurrency engagement
    dr. K.A.V. de Keere (M), University of Amsterdam

    The cryptocurrency market is the fastest growing financial market in modern history. Still we know relatively little about those who engage in this market and own cryptos. Is it for them only attractive as a new lucrative investment or do they see crypto as a technological fix to society’s ills? This study wants to shed first light on how people value and gain access to this new digital money. Through ethnographic and in-depth interviews with crypto owners, developers and devotees combined with analyses of online data, this project aims to empirically uncover the people behind crypto.

    Let’s talk about heat baby, let’s talk about you and me: Boosting individuals to talk more often about climate change and climate protection to promote correct norm perceptions and sustainable behavior
    dr. S. Klaperski-van der Wal (V), Radboud University

    Notwithstanding unequivocal evidence identifying climate change as major threat, humans struggle to engage in sustainable behavior. The misperceived social norm that nobody cares is thought to contribute to this knowledge-action gap. Interpersonal communication has been identified as promising method to correct misperceived norms, but no study has yet systematically examined the links between these concepts for norms regarding climate action. The current project sets out to address this shortcoming, and will test a new intervention which will motivate and enable individuals to have more climate-related conversations so they realize that a majority cares, and consequently behave more sustainably.

    AI for women’s health? Troubling categories of sex and gender in medical machine learning
    dr. A.V. Kleinherenbrink (V), Radboud University

    Women’s health advocates hope that artificial intelligence (AI) can advance our understanding of sex/gender health disparities, since medical research has historically focused on men. However, we lack deep insight into how AI techniques may either reify or destabilize human categories. This limits our understanding of how medical AI may impact conceptualizations of sex and gender, and by extension social equality, in and beyond medicine. To fill this gap, this project draws on feminist Science and Technology Studies to ask: how are categories and facts pertaining to sex and gender constructed and legitimized through the use of medical AI?

    From plates to bones? An inquiry into ancient lead intake and the applicability of the lead isotope system for tracing ancient human mobility
    dr. L.M. Kootker (V), VU Amsterdam

    Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis on archaeological human remains provide direct evidence for mobility. The overlap in Sr-O ratios between geographically different locations, however, complicates the identification of specific regions of origins. Adding the lead isotope system may provide a more accurate indication of the region of origin. The source of lead found in human remains, i.e., geological through food intake, or anthropogenic through contamination from leaded vessels, has not been subject to investigation. This proposal aims to identify the primary source of lead intake in Roman individuals and subsequent assesses the applicability of lead isotopes for tracing human mobility.

    Beyond the threshold: Investigating the mechanisms behind the transition from acute pain to chronic pain
    dr. A.M. Krypotos (M), Utrecht University

    Everyone experiences pain sometimes but for a significant number of individuals acute pain can derail into chronic pain. A critical factor in the transition between acute and chronic pain is pain-avoidance. Such avoidance, however, is not often investigated in real-life settings and the relevant individual differences are often ignored. Here, I test a novel framework for examining how pain-avoidance contributes to the transition between acute to chronic pain, as well as examine the role of individual differences. This project will pave the way for future prevention programs against chronic pain, alleviating the suffering of millions of people.

    Trustworthy, friendly or freaky? How life-like digital influencers can stimulate young voters to inform themselves about politics.
    dr. C.C. Liebrecht (V), Tilburg University

    Young voters have a relatively low political interest, political knowledge, and voting turnout. This project tests a newly developed tool that aims to stimulate this target group to inform themselves about politics and hence going to the ballots. The tool consists of a digital influencer (a life-like embodied conversational agent of a known person) with whom they can discuss political topics within a voting advice application. A multi-method approach (experiment, content analysis and interviews) will be used to investigate which factors contribute to the agent’s trustworthiness and friendliness without activating feelings of eeriness, and subsequently engage young voters in politics.

    The NURSE INTENTION study
    Developing a method to incorporate nurse “intention to stay” in economic evaluations of healthcare interventions

    dr. N. van der Linden (V), Delft University of Technology

    The biggest healthcare challenge of our time is the shortage of personnel, particularly nurses. Suggested solutions are to increase efficiency of care, such as by using new technologies and/or centralising care in a limited number of locations. Such interventions substantially impact nursing tasks and potentially nurse retention. This is currently not taken into account in economic evaluations of health interventions, so that interventions aimed to alleviate the workforce problem or improve cost-effectiveness, might actually worsen it. This study aims to develop a method for quantitatively incorporating nurses’ intention to stay in economic evaluations of healthcare interventions.

    Transitioning into adulthood in an era of digital misinformation
    dr. I. Ma (V), Leiden University

    Misinformation is a growing problem in modern society, particularly with the rise of social media and online communities. Even after misinformation is labelled as debunked, people may still believe it and be influenced by it. Adolescents in the transition phase to adulthood are particularly vulnerable to misinformation due to their still developing self-identity and critical thinking skills, combined with full autonomy over their social media use. I propose to identify the risk factors and contexts that make these young individuals susceptible to misinformation. The results will be used to develop targeted interventions to make youth more resilient against misinformation.

    Exploring the link between speech sound perception and production at the level of the individual
    dr. A.F. Martin (M), University of Groningen

    The way we hear the sounds of speech (perception) and the way we ourselves speak (production) are thought to be closely linked. Previous research has often looked for evidence of this link at the level of groups: people from a certain area have a particular way of speaking and also hear speech sounds in their own way. This project, on the other hand, asks if we can find evidence for a link between perception and production in individual people rather than in groups. We focus on differences in pronunciation for different kinds of vowels in French which are currently changing.

    Predictive Pedestrians—Inferring Mental States from Walking Patterns
    dr. D. Matzke (V), University of Amsterdam

    Humans can make accurate inferences about others’ mental states from the way they move (“body language”) by leveraging prior knowledge about typical movement patterns, and how these patterns differ between individuals. Although the way in which people walk around when performing goal-directed activities potentially also affords similar inferences, it has received little attention in the behavioral sciences. The goal of the project is to fill this gap by developing a comprehensive methodology to infer individuals’ mental states from their walking patterns. This will improve the prediction of how physical, psychological, and social manipulations affect walking patterns and underlying mental states.

    Politics as Monkey Business: Citizen Perceptions of Political Lying and Attitudes Toward Democracy
    dr. M.J. Meijers (M), Radboud University

    Politicians across the world have regularly been accused of lying for personal political gain. While research on disinformation and fake news has increased, little research has focused on the repercussions of political lying for representative democracy. Using a combination of citizen science – by means of a panel diary project – and traditional survey methods – with nationally representative survey experiments, this project a) explores how and when Dutch citizens perceive political lying to occur and b) tests how perceptions of political lying affect citizens’ attitudes toward democracy and support for alternative forms of governance, such as expert-rule and authoritarianism.

    Breaking Into the Boys’ Club: Unequal Network Composition and Returns as Explanations for Gender Differences in Career Success
    dr. R. Meuleman (V), Radboud University

    Gender inequality in career success is a persistent issue, with women earning less and occupying fewer management positions than men. Social networks appear an important, but understudied, explanation for this gender gap. Whether, how, and why networks contribute to gender inequality in career success remains unclear. This project aims to develop detailed network measures and collect data among the general workforce to provide new insights into the roles of unequal network composition (who has more beneficial network connections and resources) and unequal network returns (who benefits more from these connections and resources) as explanations for gender disparities in career success.

    Developing new ways to measure infant brain activity
    dr. M. Meyer (V), Radboud University

    Babies develop at a breath-taking rate. Identifying how brain development drives these changes is essential for understanding development and is basis for impactful, early interventions. Unfortunately, brain scanners with high temporal and spatial resolution were so far extremely challenging to use with infants. Recently, newly developed sensors, called optically-pumped magnetometers (OPMs), open new opportunities. We will 1) design an infant-friendly OPM set-up and 2) record brain activity with high temporal and spatial resolution from 3-month to 3-year-old children. This will make the Netherlands world-leading in using OPMs across infancy, thereby paving the way for ground-breaking research on early brain development.

    Guide Dogs in Medieval Artistic and Textual Sources
    dr. K.A. Murchison (V), Leiden University

    It was once believed that guide dogs for the blind are a modern (i.e. post-1400) phenomenon. But guide dogs existed even during the medieval period. The goal of this project is to transform an important but often overlooked area of disability studies through the first large-scale study of medieval artistic and textual representations of guide dogs from Northwestern Europe. By collecting and analysing these representations, this project will explore for the first time what they can tell us about medieval approaches to guide dogs and, in so doing, strengthen our understanding of the roots of modern-day attitudes toward guide dogs.

    Promoting social curiosity in opposing views of others
    dr. M.K. Noordewier (V), Leiden University

    People are frequently exposed to opposing views of others (e.g., on climate change or immigration). In this context, there are increased worries about polarization and divides between different groups in society. This project proposes an intervention to promote social curiosity in opposing views of others. The aim is to test whether negative feelings derived from opposing views of others can be interpreted as a normal part of dealing with these views, and a sign that there is something to learn about others. This may increase curiosity and exploratory behavior, and boost tolerance and connection to those with opposing views.

    Sludge Matters! An ethnographic exploration of post-flood river sludge and its implications in socioecological relations
    dr. I. van Oorschot (V), Erasmus University Rotterdam

    This ethnographic research explores transformations of the socioecological relations in Valkenburg at the Geul due to the 2021 floodings. Highlighting river sludge – the floods’ reminder and material remainder - this study analyses how sludge has informed, transformed, and deformed socio-ecological relations within the Geul riverscape. It develops an approach to post-disaster landscapes attuned to the persistent materialities after such a disaster and the ways these impinge on nature-culture relationships. Furthering disaster and post-disaster research by adopting a post-humanist lens, this study will help decision-makers and other stakeholders improve future preparedness for natural disasters in the Netherlands and beyond.

    Neurodiverse encounters in the workplace
    dr. L.A. van Oortmerssen (V), Open University

    This proposal outlines an explorative study into work-related interactions in organizations among neurotypical and neurodivergent professionals (with e.g., autism, ADHD, dyslexia). In cross-neurotype interaction, different ways of thinking may complement one another and generate valuable synergy. However, these differences may also cause impatience, confusion and disconnection. In daily interactions in organizations, neurodiversity-related differences in thinking and communicating may have much impact. However, employees are often unaware of the mechanisms involved in this. Based on an interview study, this project aims at revealing the main issues and success factors in cross-neurotype, face-to-face and online, interactions between professionals.

    Achieving silence: Neurofeedback augmentation of Mental Silence Meditation training using functional near-infrared spectroscopy
    dr. T. Otto (M), Maastricht University

    Meditation carries many benefits for well-being. However, it is a skill that is hard to learn, and many people quit early in training. Being able to see the activity of one’s brain areas related to mind wandering allows learning to control these areas, facilitating the learning process. This is usually done using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a costly technique with limited accessibility. This project will use a much more accessible technique, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to accelerate early meditation training by stimulating self-efficacy in controlling mind wandering in novice practitioners.

    How universal are “shape” concepts? Exploring shape and dimensionality in a pastoralist lingua-culture
    dr. S.P. Petrollino (V), Leiden University

    This study aims to reveal how language users think and talk about their experiences of things they see in the world. Specifically, the project seeks to understand how people in an African pastoralist culture think about shapes and dimensions, and how these concepts are linguistically expressed in a language that "lacks" words for geometrical shapes in the Anglo-cultural sense. Based on the view that language is the mirror of culturally shaped minds, this investigation can potentially show the direct effects of an African pastoralist culture on visual perception, contributing to our understanding of the language-culture-cognition nexus

    Power structures in nursing care
    dr. C.A.C.M. Pittens (V), VU Amsterdam

    Even though hospital nurses formed the backbone of the COVID response, they are reported to experience a lack of decision-making power in policy-making on a micro scale (patient policy) and a meso scale (hospital policy) due to two disempowering structural conditions: (1) hierarchical nurse-doctor relationships and (2) a lack of decision-making power in hospital policies. This research aims to investigate the experienced power position of nurses in three hospitals in the Netherlands: ethnographic diaries kept by respondents, semi-structured interviews, partially participant observations and focus groups. In various workshops results are co-analysed with stakeholders for knowledge uptake.

    Can hybrid work help close the labor market gender gaps?
    dr. A. Postepska (V), University of Groningen

    The work-from-home experiment initiated by the Covid pandemic facilitated remote work and changed the work environment around the world. Employers are willing to offer their employees the possibility of continuing to work remotely), and policymakers recognize the potential of hybrid work to alleviate labor market shortages by enabling participation and longer working hours for workers who combine work with informal care. This study analyzes the effects of the increase in hybrid work on women's labor market outcomes, focusing on weekly hours and wages. In doing so, it hopes to uncover a new pathway toward a gender-equal labor market.

    Banking on democracy. Evaluating the democratic justifiability of money creation by commercial banks
    dr. J.P. Prinz (M), Maastricht University

    The project reconstructs and evaluates the justifications for the money creation powers of commercial banks in the Eurozone, as offered by bankers, their public supervisors, and civil society organizations working on monetary reform. Commercial banks are responsible for ca. 95% of money creation today by providing credit. They decide about their extension of credit based on profit calculations. This means that commercial banks’ profit calculations shape which kinds of projects go ahead. If the money creation powers of commercial banks stand in tension with the democratic collective in determining the direction of societal development, how could these powers be justified?

    Open-source research and the war in Ukraine: intelligence for the people by the people?
    dr. D. van Puyvelde (M), Leiden University

    Russia’s war in Ukraine has brought unprecedented attention to open-source intelligence (OSINT) researchers who collect and analyse publicly available information on security threats. Some observers believe easy access to online information on this war has “democratised” intelligence. The investigative group Bellingcat even claims to be an “intelligence agency for the people”. This exploratory project will move the study of intelligence beyond its narrow focus on government agencies by answering the following central research question: Who are open-source intelligence activists and how reliable are their contributions to public understanding of Russia’s war in Ukraine?

    Unveiling Hidden Connections Between Science and Innovation: A Novel Approach to Patent-Paper Pairs
    dr. E. Raiteri (M), Eindhoven University of Technology

    This project aims to develop an innovative method for identifying patent-paper pairs (PPPs) using deep learning algorithms to analyze the similarity of graphical elements in patents and scientific articles. PPPs represent cases where a publication and a patent cover the same research or invention and are carried out by the same team or individual researchers. By reconstructing the complete network of direct patent-article connections, this project will provide a more accurate understanding of the relationship between fundamental research and innovation, potentially informing policy decisions on investments in basic science.

    The Rise of Algorithmic Recruiters: How Algorithms Influence HR Managers' Behavior?
    dr. T. Rezaei Khavas (V), Utrecht University

    This study investigates the role of responsibility shirking and moral ignorance in hiring processes when human recruiters receive potentially biased recommendations from algorithms. The use of algorithmic screening is widely accepted as a valuable tool, but it also raises ethical concerns regarding reinforcing existing human biases and diminishing moral accountability. Even if humans can revise algorithmic recommendations, they can attribute moral responsibility to the algorithm, leading to responsibility shirking. This study contributes to understanding the effect of (partially) delegating decision rights to algorithms on human behavior and developing policies that ensure fairness and transparency in using algorithms in decision-making processes.

    The Aftermath of Migrant Death at the Turkish-Iranian Border
    dr. M.S. Schäfers (V), Utrecht University

    This innovative project delves into the often-overlooked aftermath of death during migration through an ethnographic study of Turkey’s largest cemetery for unidentified migrants in Van, close to the Iranian border. It asks how politics of migration determine not only how people become mobile when alive, but how such politics also shape the fate of deceased migrants after death. In this way, the project promises original insights into the enduring impact of contemporary European border politics. It will culminate in an interactive online exhibition that documents the sites and stories of migrant death at Turkey’s easternmost border.

    Using Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation to Boost Thought Suppression
    dr. K. van Schie (M), Tilburg University

    The act of suppressing unwanted emotional memories is important for our mental health. Because memories can trigger strong emotions, the ability to control whether and when such memory recall occurs can help us in regulating these emotions. However, not all individuals are able to apply such thought suppression when needed. Therefore, in this innovative project, I will test whether using a novel non-invasive brain stimulation technique – that stimulates brain areas crucially involved in thought suppression – will help these individuals regain control over their unwanted thoughts and thereby their emotion regulation.

    Boosting minorities' well-being in the public workplace: the effect of social belonging interventions
    dr. C. Schott (V), Utrecht University

    The well-being of public servants is under pressure. This is particularly true for employees belonging to minority groups who often experience exclusion (e.g., women of colour). Psychologists found convincing evidence that for minority students, boosting their feeling of social belonging has long-lasting positive effects on their well-being. However, for minorities in the workplace, social belonging has received surprisingly little attention. This study is the first to systematically examine whether social belonging interventions help improve the well-being of minorities working in the public sector. This will offer organizations new opportunities to address the issue of low employee well-being in practice.

    Not all help is equal: What type of help do young children seek or provide?
    dr. J. Sierksma (V), Utrecht University

    The exchange of help between children has many positive consequences, but when help is non-empowering (i.e., taking over, providing answers) it does not lead to the improvement of skills and can undermine feelings of autonomy and competence in recipients. As exchanges of help are foundational for children’s social and academic development, this project examines when and why young children (6-8 years) seek and provide empowering and non-empowering help. This research is pivotal to stimulate exchanges of help early in life that foster mastery learning and prevent educational inequality.

    Perceiving the evil eye. Identifying the underlying cognitive processes of aggressive behavior.
    dr. D. Smeijers (V), Radboud University

    Aggressive individuals tend to process social information in a hostile manner (i.e. hostile interpretation bias). This bias is considered to be an important construct for the understanding and treatment of aggression. However, current interventions do not target such cognitive impairments probably because the underlying cognitive processes are still poorly understood. This project, therefore, proposes a state-of-the-art computational approach to determine which underlying cognitive processes are responsible for the hostile way of social information processing in severe aggressive individuals. Ultimately, this will contribute to the development of more targeted and effective aggression interventions.

    Living Meta-Analyses: Automatically Creating Literature Reviews using AI techniques
    dr. G. Spadaro (V), VU Amsterdam

    Meta-analysis is the gold-standard to perform research synthesis when testing scientific research questions. A recent trend is to publish the necessary statistical data from the relevant studies, to foster transparency and reproducibility. Yet, it still takes considerable effort to retrieve such data and perform a meta-analysis, which results mostly in a textual static PDF-output. Additionally, the results of meta-analyses might quickly become outdated, as these take several years to complete. This project will use a combination of modern AI techniques to create “living meta-analyses” that are automatically built and updated from the underlying data and can be queried on demand.

    When early vocabulary is acquired late: Effects of iconicity and gestures on vocabulary development in signing children
    dr. B. Sumer (V), University of Amsterdam

    It is widely assumed that all children receive language input when they are born, and their vocabulary development starts early. However, this is not true for deaf children born into families with no signers. They receive accessible language input when they meet other signers, but this might happen late in their lives. Thus, their vocabulary development starts late. We do not know the initial stages of their vocabulary development and which factors modulate their learning. To fill this gap in existing research, this project, for the first time, proposes to explore these stages and factors by focusing on these children.

    Climate extremes: Exploring relationships between climate activism and counter-extremism in UK politics
    dr. A.J. Telford (M), University of Amsterdam

    The Climate Extremes project provides a pioneering exploration of the relationships between climate activism and counter-extremism. Focusing on Prevent, the UK’s counter-extremism strategy, Climate Extremes has three objectives: 1) to determine how stakeholders working on climate activism and counter-extremism define ‘extremism’, 2) to establish the specific role climate change plays in the Prevent strategy, and 3) to foster interdisciplinary dialogue between climate change and counter-extremism policy, activist and scholarly communities through collaborative workshops and an accessible toolkit. Through these objectives, Climate Extremes represents an innovative contribution to the conversation on the dynamic nexus between climate change, extremism and political violence.

    Is consistency really key? The effect of parenting variation and predictability on child development
    dr. S. Thijssen (V), Radboud University

    Consistency is key, but does that also hold for parenting behavior? Research shows that family chaos is associated with negative developmental outcomes. However, consistency and chaos have rarely been studied in the context of parent-child interactions. This project introduces a novel approach to measuring consistency and chaos of parental care by coding variation and predictability of parenting behavior on the micro level, and associates these measures of parenting to child development. This new approach to parental behavior will increase our understanding of the effects of parenting on child development.

    Harnessing stress mindsets to boost pain tolerance
    dr. I. Timmers (V), Tilburg University

    Stress and pain interact. How stress impacts pain is not always straightforward: sometimes it makes pain worse, sometimes better. A critical factor herein may be our mindsets about stress - whether we believe stress is fundamentally enhancing or debilitating. I speculate that stress-is-enhancing mindsets will be associated with a more positive experience when undergoing acute experimental pain, and that altering stress-mindsets by means of short digital interventions will in turn alter how people experience pain. Resulting insights can be translated into a novel, simple and elegant way to boost pain tolerance, which could be applied in numerous settings.

    Towards personalized prevention of stress-related disorders with computational phenotyping
    dr. E. Vassena (V), Radboud University

    Stress-related disorders, like depression and anxiety, are very common, are difficult to treat despite years or research, and have dramatic impact on quality of life and participation in society. Early detection of vulnerability, before escalating into a full blow disorder, is urgently needed, to enable timely preventative intervention. I propose a new method to identify individuals at-risk for stress-related disorders, and track for each individual which aspect requires intervention, using a simple computer game. This method combines computational modeling with smartphone/smartwatch real-life measurements. This project lays the grounds for personalized cost-effective prevention.

    The Method for the Empowerment of Trauma Survivors (METS): a recovery-oriented group treatment program for undocumented migrants in the Netherlands
    dr. E.M.A. van der Ven (V), VU Amsterdam

    Undocumented migrants are faced with many problems, such as social exclusion, poor housing conditions, and uncertainty about the future, which all negatively impact their mental wellbeing. However, research including this hard-to-reach population is scarce and conventional interventions may not be suited for this group. Using an innovative research design, this study will examine the effect of a transdiagnostic group intervention, specifically designed for this population. Outcome measures include personal recovery, perceived stress and participant-rated treatment effect. Feasibility and acceptability of the intervention will also be established. The study findings will serve as the basis for a large multicenter trial.

    Harbingers of change? Social entrepreneurship’s potential for economic transformation
    dr. M.J. Verver (M), VU Amsterdam

    Social enterprises use business entrepreneurship to tackle societal problems. They thereby compensate for the failures of corporations and governments to protect disadvantaged groups and the environment. Increasingly, they are also expected to transform the sectors in which they operate. To date, however, the transformative potential of social entrepreneurship is assumed rather than investigated. This study addresses this lacuna by drawing on the economic anthropology of Karl Polanyi, developing an approach that considers social enterprises not as a panacea, but as potential harbingers of change. This approach is applied to three diverse cases of social enterprises and their stakeholders in Amsterdam.

    Affective Borders
    dr. I.C. Vrabiescu (V), VU Amsterdam

    The 2024 Schengen enlargement has direct effects on intra-EU mobility, especially by increasing border crossings from/via Ukraine. The project questions how this reshapes the practices at the EU-Schengen borders and infuses with tension the daily work of border guards creating a specific organizational atmosphere. Shifting the focus of analysis to the affective dimension of border control, the project aims to understand the consequences of emotions manifest in contexts where ethics, affect and organizational structures overlap. The resulting atmosphere at the border becomes a valuable way to engage in debates on the ethics of people working in border organizations.

  • Granted project 2022 Round 3

    Trapped in a stereotype with EU: The impact of cultural stereotypes in European border and police cooperation (TRAPS)
    dr. A. Akbik (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Cultural stereotypes are pervasive in European Union (EU) governance, creating conflicts between national governments and fuelling anti-EU sentiments among voters. Yet while stereotypes have been studied in political rhetoric and media coverage, we know little about their impact on the behaviour of public officials. Based on vignette experiments, TRAPS explores the feasibility of researching the effect of cultural stereotypes in EU governance. The project is the first of its kind because it studies stereotypes among street-level bureaucrats who work in EU border and police cooperation. The ambition is to establish an original research agenda on cultural stereotypes in transnational bureaucracies.

    Investigating Public Opinions on Financial (Dis)Incentives for Organ Donation in Europe
    dr. J.A.E. Ambagtsheer (V), Erasmus MC

    This proposed research is the first to cross-nationally survey European citizens’ opinions on removing financial disincentives and allowing incentives for deceased and living organ donation. As the incidence of organ failure continues to grow, the dialogue around removing/allowing (dis)incentives for organ donation is becoming increasingly relevant. Herein also lies this proposal’s high-risk/high gain nature: payments for organs are banned universally, however, these laws may not reflect the opinion of the majority of the population. This proposal has the potential to lead to legislative changes that allow trials on whether removing disincentives/allowing incentives may lead to higher organ donation rates.

    Migraine burden in individuals with low socioeconomic status: The role of diet
    dr. K.A.C. Berk (V), Erasmus MC

    Many people suffer from migraines in their daily lives. People with lower education or income (lower "socioeconomic status") are more likely to have migraines. But why is this? One reason may be that these people consume an unhealthier diet. This could cause migraines to occur more often, and make them worse. In this project, we are going to find out if this is the case. With the results, we hope to develop new dietary treatments especially for people of lower socioeconomic status. So that they suffer less from this disease and social inequality is reduced.

    Strengthening labour law enforcement by collective redress
    mr. dr. D.M.A. Bij de Vaate (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Labour law is meaningless without effective enforcement. Yet, this is very controversial for the Netherlands. Dutch labour law enforcement has been predominantly left to the individual worker, while the state has limited its own role in enforcement. Particularly in labour law, this emphasis on self-enforcement is highly paradoxical as it neglects the inherent power imbalance between worker and employer. This socio-legal project examines if collective enforcement could be an answer to the enforcement deficit in labour law by empirically analysing the practices, possibilities and restrictions of labour law enforcement by trade unions and their interrelation with the legal framework.

    The Expansion of “Violence”: Public attitudes to interpersonal violence in the Netherlands
    dr. J. A. van Breen (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Interpersonal violence, such as homicide, assault, or domestic violence, is a topic about which people care a great deal. It has devastating consequences for those who are personally involved, but is also undesirable from a societal perspective. Crucially, in the Western world, there seem to be fundamental changes going on in public attitudes to interpersonal violence – people now recognise a greater variety of types of violence than before. This project surveys members of the public to better understand these changes to how we – as a society – think about violence.

    Millions of pro-environmental behaviors
    dr. C. Brick (M), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Environmental problems like climate change are accelerating. Psychology can help facilitate sustainable behaviors, but most of the existing research is limited by small samples and few behaviors. I propose a partnership with the official app developer of a major international campaign with millions of reported sustainability behaviors. We can finally address questions about whether and how such behaviors lead to others, the validity of self-reports across different countries, and what types of people do which actions. These answers could help reduce environmental impacts and to preserve a healthy way of life for everyone.

    Loneliness as a Driver of Emigration (LoneDrivE)
    dr. T. van den Broek (M), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Many migrants suffer from loneliness. This is typically ascribed to the challenges that come with migration, such as the separation from friends and family in the country of origin and struggles with settling in the destination country. This project breaks new ground by exploring an overlooked additional explanation: selection of lonely people into international migration. The wish to escape experiences of loneliness in the country of origin may contribute to people’s intentions to emigrate. This project analyses multiple, complementary data sources to gain insights into the extent to which loneliness is a driver of emigration.

     

    Wording Repair: Digitally Unveiling the History of Reparative Justice in the Words of a Forgotten Diary
    dr. L. De Vita (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    This project will investigate the history of reparation in the aftermath of mass human rights abuse, by employing digital tools. It will analyse the personal diaries of German jurist Otto Küster (1907-1989), who dedicated much of his professional life to the quest for reparations for Holocaust survivors. He did so while taking notes, on an almost daily basis, which have never been made available to researchers until now. While using and advancing handwritten-character recognition (HCR) technology, Wording Repair will provide bottom-up insights that will contribute to shaping the emerging field of historical reparations studies.

    Predicting cardiovascular symptoms in female coronary vascular spastic patients using Heart Rate Variability analysis.
    dr. S. El Messaoudi (V), Radboud universitair medisch centrum

    Chest pain due to heart disease affects 126 million people globally. In middle aged women, chest pain is often caused by spam of the heart vessels . Psychosocial stress is a an important trigger for heart spasm. However, adequate support to prevent symptoms due to stress is currently lacking. As a result, many patients have stress related symptoms. Stress can be estimated with a smartwatch using heart rate variability (HRV). Our project aims to investigate the predictive value of HRV on cardiac symptoms. Ultimately, the prediction model can be used to warn patients for upcoming symptoms, allowing for preventative measures.

    Cultivating sustainability as a research quality in the laboratory life sciences
    dr. T.P. Franssen (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Researcher-led ‘Green teams’ are being formed in the laboratory life sciences with the aim to promote a more sustainability-minded research culture. The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework is a novel and popular tool used in laboratories to achieve this goal. However, cultivating of sustainability is not easy at all. Implementing changes to everyday research practices raises concerns about simultaneously sustaining other qualities of research such as precision, rigor and speed. This project studies how green teams attempt to cultivate sustainability as a quality of research in the laboratory life sciences and what the main challenges are in doing so.

    Once upon a time in academia: how campus novels can improve PhD candidates’ well-being
    dr. M.M. van Goch (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    The well-being of PhD candidates is under pressure; many of them experience imposter feelings. Reading for pleasure increases people’s well-being: Stories, and especially humor in stories, can help people by creating reflective distance from reality. We hypothesize that campus novels – novels set on college campuses, told from the perspectives of faculty or students – are particularly effective, because they are characterized by dark humor and satire. We let groups of PhD candidates reflect on campus novel texts together, and study the interaction between texts and readers, and the effects of group reflection on well-being.

    The Secret to Secrecy: Development of a Novel Measure to Assess Secrecy and Investigate Its Sociodemographic and Psychological Correlates
    dr. R.E.R. van der Hallen (V), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Secrecy, the intentional concealment of personal information from others, is common and universal. Nevertheless, very little is known about the who, what, and why of secret keeping and how it impacts our quality of life. This project aims to expand current theoretical and empirical evidence on secrecy by (1) conducting a bottom-up investigation of what “secrecy” entails, (2) developing a self-report instrument to measure secrecy, and (3) investigating the socio-demographic and psychological correlates of secrecy. This project will provide novel insights into secrecy as a complex phenomenon, individual differences, and the role of secrecy in everyday life.

    Radical innovation or empty promises? Exploring how assumptions about decision-making, participation and people management are challenged by self-managing organisations
    dr. R.L. Hewett (V), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Self-managing organisations (SMOs) promise no managers, little hierarchy, and put decision-making in the hands of employees. Yet, while more SMOs have emerged in response to calls for increased transparency, empowerment, and adaptability in the face of turbulent macro conditions, it is unclear how much they deliver on these promises. Through an ambitious study of 20 SMOs, I move beyond the debate about whether self-management is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to explore which fundamental assumptions about management and organizations SMOs challenge (and which they do not). Hereby this project aims to contribute to management literature, organizational design, and employment policy.

    International courts in an era of smartphones and social media – improving human rights accountability?
    dr. G.K. Hirschmann (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Videos shared on social media have become important evidence to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable. What does this increased use of digital open source evidence mean for the quality of international human rights accountability? Does it make international courts more efficient in ensuring human rights accountability, as many assume? And what can be done to mitigate potential downsides, such as deep fakes and implicit biases in legal judgments? Through an innovative experimental design, this project will help us understand how perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are held accountable most effectively for their crimes.

    Lost in Dissemination? Gender Representation of Dutch Professors in Newspapers and Social Media
    dr. B. Hofstra (M), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Are women professors often quoted in newspapers? And are men professors highly active on social media? This project answers these questions by considering whether and why women professors are represented in news and social media at different numbers than men professors. This representation in the public arena has become increasingly important for professors as the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the general public is a growing and essential part of professors’ activities and evaluation. This project sets out to study this among all Dutch professors (1990-2021) through a series of new database linkages and computational methods.

    A group-centred mobile lab to study the impact of artificial intelligence on family social dynamics
    dr. R. Hortensius (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    How we trust, feel, understand, and connect with family members shape the well-being of all family members. With families increasingly inviting digital voice assistants into their life, questions arise how we can describe these family dynamics in the age of artificial intelligence. In this project, we will develop a new group-centred mobile lab to study how social dynamics between family members are impacted by interactions with digital voice assistants. Using an innovative neurocognition-at-home approach we will measure both behavioural and brain measures of all family members allowing to uncover social dynamics with unprecedented detail and clarity.

    Should Rich and Poor Offenders Pay the Same Fines? Empirical Analysis of Income-Dependent Fines
    prof. dr. E. Kantorowicz-Reznichenko (V), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Are fixed fines for all offenders fair? Can they deter richer offenders? Having such doubts in mind, already 43 countries around the world (including half of the EU countries) have adopted income-dependent fines – day fines. Day fines allow to systematically account for the severity of the offence and at the same time also for the income of the offender. Yet, it is still unclear whether they are indeed more deterrent and are perceived as fairer by the public. In this ground-breaking project, empirical methods and novel experimental designs will be used to provide evidence-based answers to these questions.

     

    More than the sum of its parts: investigating the parts of a combined parent-child treatment for children with social anxiety
    dr. A.M. Klein (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Social anxiety disorder is one of the most prevalent mental disorders in childhood with a large impact on the lives of children and their families. Unfortunately, the majority of children who receive treatment still experience significant anxiety after treatment, stressing the need for more insight into mechanisms of change. This project tests a new program, in which parent-focused and child-focused interventions are combined, based on recent theoretical insights. The intensive measurements during the program increase our understanding of treatment success and the so needed substantial improvement in treatment outcome and break the ‘ceiling’ that has limited treatment outcomes for decades.

    Blood, Tears and Samurai Love: A Digital Edition of a Tragic Tale from Eighteenth-Century Japan
    dr. A.C. Koch (V), Universiteit Leiden

    This digital research project is centred on a unique early eighteenth-century Japanese manuscript recently discovered in a US library collection. Set in 1714 in northwestern Japan, the anonymous work describes a samurai same-sex love affair and its tragic consequences. As such, it provides a rare example of an early modern ‘true-record book’ (a book of rumours surrounding actual events and scandals, illicitly circulating in manuscript form) on the subject of male same-sex love. The primary aims of the project are (1) to create an interactive scholarly digital edition of the manuscript and (2) design teaching content for educators and students.

    Understanding social anxiety where it matters most
    dr. S.B.J. Koch (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Patients with social anxiety disorder fear negative evaluation from others. However, research is scarce on how social anxiety manifests during actual social interactions, hindering our understanding and treatment of the disorder. This project aims to investigate the impact of evaluative demands from live social interactions on individuals with social anxiety, differentiating between anxiogenic effects of 1) beliefs about interaction partners and 2) changes during the interaction itself. The findings will help identify factors contributing to the manifestation of social anxiety during social interactions, the context where it matters most.

    Staging Energy Poverty (StEP) – exploring lived experiences of energy poverty through theatre methods
    dr. S. van Lanen (M), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    More and more households struggle to pay their energy bills. So far, studies identified which regions, buildings, and households are vulnerable to energy poverty. Yet, our understanding of what it means to live in energy poverty remains limited. StEP aims to identify the main problems experienced by households living in energy poverty and the potential solutions they envision. First, using a creative participatory method, forum theatre, StEP centralises the experiences of households in energy poverty. Then, it reflects on these experiences with participants, social workers, and policy-makers to collectively design and implement individual strategies and policy solutions to energy poverty.

    Don’t bother the patient: Identifying fertility issues in patients with cancer and sickle cell disease through an online discussion platform
    dr. V. Lehmann (V), Amsterdam UMC

    Many young patients google and consult online discussion platforms for health-related information. This can be useful and supportive, but also problematic if misinformation is spread. In case of fertility problems after oncological/hematological diseases, information is complex and confounded by uncertainty, which can cause misunderstandings and unnecessary burden. Patients’ fertility-related knowledge is traditionally studied through surveys, over-representing female and highly educated people. This project innovatively utilizes online discussions to include opinions of patients who often refuse to participate in research (e.g.,low literate). This will allow understanding diverse patients’ questions and common misunderstandings, to improve information provision in clinical practice and online.

    Game changer or business as usual? Understanding firm responses to mandatory human rights regulation
    dr. N. Lohmeyer (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Westerse regeringen wenden zich steeds meer tot verplichte regelgeving om ervoor te zorgen dat bedrijven mensenrechten respecteren in wereldwijde toeleveringsketens. Gezien dit het afgelopen decennium is overgelaten aan vrijwillige regulering, is dit een drastische verschuiving die aanzienlijke veranderingen vereist binnen bedrijven gevestigd in westerse landen. Hoe regelgeving door overheden precies wordt vertaald naar veranderingen in het beleid en de praktijk van bedrijven omtrent mensenrechten moet nog worden onderzocht. Op basis van interviews en documenten verschaft dit project inzicht in het proces van implementatie van verplichte regelgeving omtrent mensenrechten, wat theorie en praktisch inzicht over dit opkomende fenomeen belooft te bevorderen.

    Fetishizing and unveiling Dutch colonialism: Anglophone literary perspectives
    dr. S.M. Manizza-Roszak (V), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    Contemporary historical fiction by US, UK and Australian writers has often sanitized stories of Dutch imperialism for English-speaking audiences, fetishizing colonial-era Dutch womanhood and indulging racially charged representations of Black and Asian colonial subjects. This project investigates these problematic representations and seeks to identify and analyze alternative texts by Anglophone postcolonial and diasporic writers who present new perspectives on the Netherlands’ colonial history and its legacies.

    What do anthropological records tell us about democratic checks and balances? A pilot study of hunter-gatherer politics (ANTHROPOL)
    dr. H. Mazepus (V), Universiteit Leiden

    ANTHROPOL aims to advance explanations of democratic backsliding through its innovative focus on political intuitions. Political intuitions likely developed in the ancestral human environment. Therefore, ANTHROPOL will analyse anthropological records of hunter-gatherer societies to explore how and under what conditions humans keep their leaders in check. ANTHROPOL will start an interdisciplinary pursuit to rethink contemporary checks and balances, produce an original dataset, and generate new hypotheses about why democracy-loving citizens often remain indifferent to abuses of power by authoritarian leaders. ANTHROPOL is thus the first steppingstone in a research agenda to identify political intuitions relevant to democracy.

    Social distance and foreign policy preferences: Why we help some but not others (SOCIAL).
    dr. H. van Meegdenburg (V), Universiteit Leiden

    The war on Ukraine came as a shock to many. People took to the streets to express their solidarity and Mark Rutte soon promised and send anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles. This reaction stands in stark contrast to conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. SOCIAL introduces Bogardus’ Social Distance Theory to political science and studies social distance—the degree of sympathetic understanding that exists between people—in relation to people’s foreign policy preferences. Using vignette-based surveys, SOCIAL studies whether a perceived social distance to the victims of conflict shapes people’s willingness to allocate public resources to provide (military) support.

    From Coercion to Consent: Sexual Violence and Female Empowerment in medieval Dutch and French Songtexts
    dr. C.V. de Morree (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    This project investigates the themes of sexual coercion and consent in medieval songtexts about sexual encounters. The project centres on a collection of Dutch songs that stands out from a European perspective because its key motif appears to be not forced sex but mutual consent. Whereas French songtexts are pervaded by rape, Dutch songtexts often feature couples making mutual decisions to have sex and women explicitly giving their consent. As this project will demonstrate, these Dutch songs encouraged medieval women’s agency and equality in the domain of sexuality, through their empowering messages.

     

    Taxing sugar: the Dutch sugar tax discourse in the news media and its political agenda-setting effects
    dr. B.C. Mulder (M), Wageningen University & Research

    In the Netherlands, sugar tax is currently debated as policy measure in the fight against overweight. Previous research has established the political agenda-setting effects of news media debates, thus confirming its influence on public policies. However, this has been neglected for health policies, including sugar tax, even though such policies strongly influence public health and the economy. The project thus aims to investigate: 1) the political agenda-setting effects of the news media debate on the sugar tax, and 2) how the news media construct the sugar tax debate, including which discursive element are adopted in the political debate.

    Inducing awe to help people perform environmentally friendly behaviour.
    dr. B.C.N. Müller (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    There is strong scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans is the major reason for the accelerated pace in which our planet is warming up. The destructive impact of human overconsumption is an importantpredictor of this temperature increase. Thus, novel interventions to help people make more conscious decisions about their purchases and decrease their consumption is urgently needed. The current project will develop and test such an intervention that aims to elicit wonder and awe for the environment, which is assumed to lead to pro-environmental behaviour. This goal is achieved by applying state-of-the-art Virtual Reality technology.

    Cowborgs in the polder: how the design of farm buildings, animal bodies and technologies transformed Dutch dairy landscapes
    dr. V. Munoz Sanz (M), Technische Universiteit Delft

    Automated technologies have driven the transformation and growth of the Dutch dairy industry. Today, this sector is questioned for its adverse effect on nature. To better address environmental problems caused by farming, it is important to understand how the use of automation in this sector is affecting those places where food is produced. This transdisciplinary research study will examine the interactions between animals, humans, robots, data technologies, and farm architecture in the industrialized large-scale Dutch dairy landscapes, from 1992 to the nitrogen crisis. Ultimately, the project will broaden our conception of how technology and industrial capitalism shape the built environment.

    Towards a computational model of reading
    dr. B. Nicenboim (M), Tilburg University

    Reading may seem effortless, but it is, in reality, a very complex task. This complexity becomes apparent when we face difficult texts or when we have a reading disorder. Examining reading times and brain activity while people read can provide a window into the cognitive processes taking place. However, it may not be sufficient to give a precise account on how we read and understand language. A computational model that simulates human reading can pave the way to a more complete account of reading and language comprehension. The project's aim is to gather data to create this computational model.

    When Computers Join the Moral Conversation
    dr. E.R.H. O'Neill (V), Technische Universiteit Eindhoven

    Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (e.g. ChatGPT) mean computers are poised to play an unprecedented role in the human moral conversation. If no action is taken, by default humans will routinely encounter computer systems that appear to praise and blame, make claims about right and wrong, command and scold, and express moral emotions. Such interactions have the potential to profoundly influence human values and norms. This project will identify important moral conversational roles that computer systems are already playing, which urgently need ethical scrutiny, and will develop initial ethical recommendations for further research and debate.

     

    The effect of distress on bystander intervention: a behavioural-based analysis on real-life conflict events
    dr. V. Pallante (V), NSCR

    For half a century, a widespread assumption promoted by media-reported cases of violence, depicted bystanders as “inactive”: people who witness someone involved in a violent incident do not provide any help. Although recent real-life observations documented that bystanders play conversely an active role, what drives their intervention remains unclear. This study aims to explore the role of bystanders’ experience of distress in regulating their interventions. By integrating observational methods from ethology (behavioral biology), bystander behaviour in street fights recorded with surveillance cameras will be analysed to provide a behavioural-based perspective on the emotional drivers of decision-making in public spaces.

    When do women participate in politics? Studying networks of information and social pressure
    dr. J. Phillips (M), Universiteit Leiden

    When close contacts share information, women can be empowered to participate in politics. But relationships also convey social pressures that can discourage or encourage participation. We explore whether these competing processes explain persistent gender gaps in participation. To understand the conditions under which women participate, an experimental encouragement invites already-surveyed citizens to a public meeting. Varying the gender of the invitee and an encouragement to bring others, we distinguish the relative importance of information from social pressure. If informed women participate, and mobilize other women too, this is a strong signal of how networks empower women to participate in politics.

    From Mimesis to Metaphor: Reconciling Nature and Humanity in the Age of Climate Crisis
    dr. R.A. Ploof (V), Universiteit Leiden

    The climate crisis is often seen as a product of human hubris and humanity’s domination of nature. Confronting the need to reimagine the human-nature relationship, many political theorists argue that humans are not special and call for humility. But humility is an indeterminate value that can lead to political domination. How can humans relate to nature modestly while remaining free? In this project I use the history of political thought to develop a new theory of the human-nature relationship suited to the climate crisis in which humans are both part of and distinct from nature and humbled yet nevertheless free.

    The new reality of double materiality – towards an integrated perspective on financial and societal value creation in firms
    dr. F.H.J. Polzin (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    Given the urgency of the climate crisis and other societal challenges, calls for businesses to engage with those challenges have grown substantially over recent years. But which topics should businesses prioritize? Until now these have been limited to issues that can be easily measured and reported and that pose an immediate risk to the company. This research project will use a novel dataset which includes the ‘objectified’ societal footprint of companies (including the impact they have on society). It will allow to make a significant step towards a holistic link between financial and societal value creation in firms.

    Fear amnesia: intentional suppression to boost fear extinction
    dr. C.W.E.M. Quaedflieg (V), Maastricht University

    Fear is a universal experience and fuels our response to cope with threat. Persistent fear, after the threat is no longer present, is a central symptom seen in a number of clinical disorders. Current treatment focuses exclusively on trying to reduce the fear response (fear extinction), rather than target the underlying mechanism: inhibitory learning. Using a newly developed paradigm, we will target inhibitory learning using intentional memory suppression during extinction. We will test whether intentional memory suppression can stop the retrieval of fear memories and, as a result be used to boost fear amnesia, the forgetting of the fear.

    The “Woman, Life, Freedom” Uprising in Iran: Women’s Activism and the Shifting Grounds of Religion
    dr. L. Rahbari (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    This project aims to answer the question, “What is the role of religion in the Woman Life Freedom uprising?” It investigates the potential role of religion in the anti-regime protests which started in Iran in September 2022, widely known as the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising. The project uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis to determine the significance of religion in the uprising’s political, cultural, and artistic productions, such as slogans, (digital) art, graffiti, and video clips. The analysis focuses on the presence and/or lack of religious symbolism and the potential shifting grounds of religion in Iran.

    China in Print: Visual Representations of China in European Print Culture, 1595-1860
    dr. S. van Rossem (M), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    This project explores visual representations of Chinese people in Western European prints between 1595 and 1860. During this period, European perceptions of China changed dramatically, moving from exalted Sinophilia during the first period of cultural contacts to a generally held Sinophobia after the Opium Wars. While recent studies emphasise premodern intercultural encounters, the current scholarship is locked into an approach that considers these without taking into account the material reality of print, nor its changes across the premodern period. This project expands research horizons across fields in historical studies, synthesising methods from book history, art history, and global history.

    Fine-grained motor measures as a novel behavioral proxy for brain network integrity in MS
    dr. M.F.L. Ruitenberg (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Recent work in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) showed that having an intact functional brain network is a requirement for successful rehabilitation. However, brain networks can only be quantified at a group-level and not at the person-level. We therefore need novel indicators for brain network integrity to be able to seize the window-of-opportunity when it comes to rehabilitation. This project evaluates whether subtle measures of motor functioning can serve as indicators for brain network integrity. Such measures could provide a cost-effective, easy to administer tool to identify patients that are most likely to benefit from rehabilitation programs or clinical trials.

    Reconstructing Mosul: Iraqi and Dutch Perspectives on Efficient and Sustainable Aid
    dr. K.M. Santing (V), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    This research focuses on reconstruction projects in Mosul, Iraq, funded by UNDP’s Funding Facility for Stabilization (FFS), to which the Netherlands is the third largest donor. The political and religious context in which the reconstruction of Mosul takes place is characterised by a complex combination of international actors, a Shia-dominated national government and a predominantly Sunni local administration. The emphasis of this study is on the extent to which this complex context affects the efficiency and sustainability of the FFS funded reconstruction efforts in Mosul and whether this influences Dutch decisions with regards to funding the FFS.

    Bridging the Gap: Using Technology to Make Empirical Evidence Accessible to Legal Practice
    dr. J.M. Schell-Leugers (V), Maastricht University

    The gap between legal-psychological research findings and legal practice leads to several problems in the criminal justice system, which can have devastating consequences in many ways, most notably miscarriages of justice. This proposal aims to make use of today’s rapidly advancing information technologies to bridge the divide between scientific findings and legal practice to help solve these current problems. By exploring innovative ways of improving the application of scientific findings in investigations and courtrooms, this project will examine the applicability and development of a prototype app that gives legal practitioners easy and fast access to research findings.

    Intimate Allies: Collaborative Couples and the Making of Global Environmental Governance
    dr. M.S. Schleper (V), Maastricht University

    De globale milieupolitiek zoals we die nu kennen ontstond tussen 1945 en 1973 binnen organisaties zoals UNESCO en UNEP. Deze wereldwijde initiatieven waren afhankelijk van invloedrijke actoren, met brede en vaak onsamenhangende netwerken, zowel privé als professioneel. Tot vandaag worden deze heterogene netwerken niet goed begrepen. Voortbouwend op werk in de wetenschapsgeschiedenis die het belang van alternatieve actoren en informele omgevingen heeft erkend, onderzoekt Intimate Allies de governance van milieu-netwerken en bestudeerd daarvoor het gezamenlijke werk van twee koppels die centraal stonden in naoorlogse intergouvernementele milieuorganisaties: Juliette en Julian Huxley, en Hanne en Maurice Strong.

    Why do contacts with natives increase migrants’ chances on the labor market? The role of system knowledge
    dr. V.M.K. Seibel (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    People with migration background still score alarmingly low on the Dutch labor market compared to Dutch natives. However, this is much less so for migrants who hold social relationships with Dutch natives. The literature assumes that Dutch natives transfer system knowledge about the Dutch labor market to people with migration background which is crucial for their job-seeking process. However, this assumption has never been empirically tested. In this project I examine if contact to Dutch natives indeed increase migrants’ knowledge of the Dutch labor market, thereby positively influencing migrants’ chances on the labor market.

    Internationalization of cultural goods and Its Impact on Multinational Corporations Abroad
    dr. J. Shin (V), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    The increasing prevalence of digital technology has led to the widespread availability of cultural goods such as movies, music, and television content. Despite a substantial body of literature asserting that a country's image is difficult to alter, recent trends indicate that the international popularity of cultural products has a significant impact on a country's image. This study endeavours to explore the mechanisms through which the internationalization of cultural products can alter the perception of a country's image and how this impacts the foreign operations and performance of multinational enterprises from the internationalized cultural industry.

    LEARN: Learning in Regional Networks
    dr. R.B.L. Sijbom (M), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Digital and technological developments (e.g., Artificial Intelligence) are changing the nature of work and the way we do our day-to-day jobs. This continuously requires new knowledge and skills, making learning more important than ever. To live up to these new requirements, organizations are increasingly seeking collaboration within regional networks to exchange knowledge and learn from each other. Yet, while such networks are potentially a powerful source of knowledge, it remains unknown whether and when these regional networks actually contribute to learning. This project aims to uncover how organizations can seize the potential of their regional networks to foster learning.

    Can borrowing constraints explain the comeback of the private rental sector?
    dr. F.J.T. Sniekers (M), Tilburg University

    Buy-to-let investment has been an important driver of the revival of private rental sectors in developed economies. How is it possible that buy-to-let investors can outbid potential owner-occupiers that prefer home-ownership over renting? This project uses state-of-the-art causal identification methods to study whether borrowing constraints can explain the rise of buy-to-let investment. Borrowing constraints prevent people from spending as much on mortgage payments as on rental payments. This difference gives investors profit opportunities to convert owner-occupied housing into rental housing. This study uncovers whether buy-to-let investors indeed cater to tenants that would be owners in the absence of borrowing constraints.

    Bird Singalong: a citizen science project to understand the musical abilities of parrots
    dr. M.J. Spierings (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Do parrots have a musical ear? For humans, perfect pitch, or absolute pitch perception, is a rare ability: around 1 out of 10.000 people have it. Most people use relative pitch perception to recognize and replicate music; when a melody is played a little higher or lower, it is still recognized as the same melody. Birds, however, tend to focus mainly on the absolute pitch information of notes within a melody. If animals are musical, they might also use relative pitch. With this project we aim to investigate how well parrots recognize and imitate melodies, and how flexible they are.

     

    Cultivating Museum Ecologies Otherwise
    dr. C. Sterling (M), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    In the face of widespread environmental degradation there is an urgent need for new cultural practices that bridge the divide between humans and nature. Many museums have recently foregrounded ecological approaches and perspectives through exhibitions and public programming. This project goes beyond such initiatives to consider the impact and politics of ecological thinking on fundamental museum practices, from cleaning and conservation to governance and exhibition design. The aim is to identify and cultivate radical new strategies that demonstrate how museums – always embedded in their own cultural-ecological worlds – can promote more-than-human flourishing.

    Testing the Dispersion Theory: a corpus-based study
    dr. B.P.P. Storme (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Sound systems are remarkably similar across languages. The Dispersion Theory explains these similarities as the result of a universal communicative pressure to select maximally distinct sounds. Although very influential, this theory has proven difficult to test quantitatively. The current project aims to solve this issue by using a mathematically motivated method to test the Dispersion Theory against a multilingual speech corpus including data from over 80 languages. This project will have major implications for phonological theory as it will provide the first comprehensive and quantitative test one of the most influential phonological theories on the market.

    Title of the project: Reading comprehension and motivation: are struggling readers trapped in a vicious circle?
    dr. K.F.A. Stroet (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Recent international assessments show alarming results: Many Dutch children struggle to understand texts and don’t like to read. This project brings together two important fields in educational research: motivation and reading comprehension. While often studied in isolation, this experimental study focuses on the direct influence of motivation on reading processes and vice versa. Results will help move both fields forward by providing a new framework for thinking about complex interactions of motivation and reading processes and, importantly, allow educators to decide on more targeted interventions for struggling readers.

    Data purchasing by governments in the context of societal challenges: A mapping study
    dr. I. Susha (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    In order to tackle complex societal challenges, governments need to make evidence-based decisions and need best available data as input. Much of relevant data is now in the hands of the private sector, therefore governments increasingly resort to purchasing data from the private sector. This poses several challenges, especially to local governments with limited IT and procurement capabilities. This project is the first systematic effort to create an evidence base about when, how, and for what purposes Dutch (local) governments resort to purchasing data from the private sector and what might be the (adverse) effects of that.

    Who did all the work? The hidden labour of colonial science
    dr. F.H. Sysling (V), Universiteit Leiden

    This project makes visible the hidden labour of non-western assistants in the making of scientific knowledge in the Dutch East Indies, 1890–1962. The contribution to science of local interpreters, informants, hunters and guides usually remains hidden in scientific publications. This project creates a unique database with information on these assistants, based on our research in a large corpus of books, archives and photographs. This inventory will make it possible to rewrite the history of Dutch colonial science as a collective project involving many non-western actors.

    Populism Crisis Nexus
    dr. V.T. Tsagkroni (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Major societal crises disrupt organisational practices, threaten individual and institutional reputations, and require rapid political responses. However, the identification and interpretation of situations that may be perceived as crises is a socially constructed process. The existing literature shows that populist actors harness and exploit crises for political gain, but very little is known about the ways in which they construct and instrumentalise crisis. Obtaining this knowledge is crucial in light of the global decline of democracy, and the rise of populist and anti-democratic parties around the world.

    Emergence and Evolution of Age Discrimination in the Workplace: An Agent-Based Model of Organizational Dynamics
    dr. K.L. Turek (M), Tilburg University

    This project will study age-based stereotypes and discrimination at work by applying an innovative methodology of Agent-Based Modelling (ABM). ABM uses computational simulations to model complex and dynamic relationships, such as those between older workers, employers and the organisational environment. My goal is to understand how discriminatory social norms (i) develop in organisations, (ii) affect employers and stimulate harmful practices, and (iii) change over time through interactions. This knowledge is essential for designing solutions to reduce workplace age discrimination. Additionally, the project will contribute to the novel field of organisational simulations by exploring the innovative ABM methodology.

    Telling Stories, Telling Lies: The Role of Narrative Competence in the Detection and Interpretation of Online Misinformation
    dr. I.G.M. van de Ven (V), Tilburg University

    In contemporary society countless, often contradictory, narratives proliferate on social media. Stories are persuasive and can be used to misinform. Falling for deception can have serious ramifications. Studies into online misinformation rarely focus on the narrative characteristics of these texts. In this study, I map out these characteristics and design a measuring instrument for ‘narrative competence’: knowledge of stories and the skills to analyze them. With a large-scale survey study among students, I will investigate whether narrative competence helps in detecting and interpreting online misinformation. The study will provide insight into how we can counteract misinformation through literature education.

    How Much Do Changing Global Supply Chains Matter for Export Quality? Insights from a Novel Measurement Approach
    dr. K.M. Wacker (M), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    Offering high-quality versions of a product provides a competitive advantage. Economic concepts and measures of countries’ export quality, however, neglect that exported goods depend on foreign parts and components supplied by other countries. The dependence on such global value chains has become apparent during Covid and war-related sanctions. This project develops a novel measure of export quality that takes such global linkages into account. The constructed data allows us to investigate how global supply chains matter for export quality and fosters our understanding of the implications for competitiveness and development.

    Student loans and mental health problems in higher education
    dr. Z. Wang (V), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    This project investigates whether the introduction of the student loan system in Dutch higher education influences students’ mental health problems over the full trajectory of study. This natural experiment allows us to investigate the effect of increased pressure during the high school exam year, as well as the effect of tighter financial constraints and higher debt during their studies. I construct objective measures of mental health problems of various degrees of severity, using rich datasets on health claims/prescription drug/diagnosis data. This will be the first study to provide large-scale causal evidence, linking student loan to mental health problems.

    Curiosity in cognitive aging
    dr. I.M. Wiegand (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Curiosity is an intrinsic motivational driver of behaviour that shapes our experiences. While the importance of curiosity during development and young adulthood has received great attention, its role in cognitive aging remains underexplored. Curiosity has the potential to promote cognitive stimulation to build protective resources that mitigate against cognitive decline. The aim of this project is to provide the first systematic evidence to reveal the positive effect of curiosity on cognition in older age, supporting its potential to promote healthy cognitive aging.

    Decentralization and Public Spending in a Colonial Context: The Ethical Policy in the Netherlands East Indies
    dr. P. de Zwart (M), Wageningen University & Research

    In 1901 the Dutch colonial government started the “Ethical Policy”, which included a programme of political decentralization and aimed to expand public infrastructure, education and health care in order to improve living conditions in the Netherlands East Indies. Both underlying motives and the extent to which this succeeded are the subject of academic debate. This project entails the collection and publication of a large body of primary data that will shed light on the following question: how was public spending distributed across localities in the Netherlands East Indies between 1892 and 1942 and how was this affected by decentralization.

     

  • Granted projects 2022 Round 1 and 2

    Towards a real-time personalized alert system in mental health care
    dr. E. Aarts (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    Technological advances such as smartphones have enabled the collection of data on emotion, cognition, and behavior in real-time. While these data provide an unpreceded wealth of information on the dynamics in psychopathology over time, one of the greatest promises of digital mental health has not yet been realized: a smart real-time personalized alert system to anticipate clinically relevant symptom changes. In this pilot study, I develop and validate a novel dynamic statistical algorithm to enable a smart personalized digital mental health prediction tool.

    Strategic Economic Trade-offs Between Climate Mitigation and Geoengineering
    dr. A.L. Abatayo (V), Wageningen University & Research

    The negative consequences of climate change have led to increased technical research on the possibility of manipulating the planet’s climate to create global cooling (i.e., geoengineering). Will the existence of such a technology lead to a decline in efforts to reduce the production of greenhouse gas emissions? Will asymmetry in preferences for global cooling lead to miscoordination? And can pledges or promises lead to better coordination?

    Vertical urban geographies: a new framework for studying cities
    dr. A.A. Aceska (V), Wageningen University & Research

    Cities all over the world are getting higher and deeper than ever before. They are made of various vertical geographies, from skyscrapers and tall landmarks to multi-level underground places. Yet, the scholarly perspectives of studying the social relations in cities are still predominantly 'horizontal'. Throughout history, social scientists have studied mainly the relations between people and ‘street-level’ places (plazas, playgrounds, parks, rivers, canals, consumption places), often ignoring the vertical dimensions of cities as part of the complex urban realities. This project develops an innovative framework for studying vertical urban geographies, challenging the dominant horizontal views of studying the city.

    Youth mental health meets big data analytics: Hype or Hope?
    dr. M. Aghajani (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Depression and anxiety disorders in youth are reaching epidemic proportions, causing huge emotional/social/economic burden for millions of youngsters worldwide. Yet, we still lack thorough insights into underlying neural, biological, and psychosocial mechanisms, which renders effective prevention/intervention rather arduous. Experts hence warrant an urgent paradigm shift, wherein the focus is shifted towards individual patients and personalized inferences, with the help of artificial intelligence and large neuro-bio-psychosocial datasets (“big data”). This proof-of-concept study will test this paradigm shift within an existing clinical consortium (±10,000 participants), so to confirm or refute its acclaimed potential in personalized care (diagnostics/prognostic/risk).

    (No) Ambassadors of Modernity: Habitus, Interculturality, and the Ottoman Diplomatic Venture in Europe, 1832-1914
    H. Alloul (M), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Most scholarship on the history of modern diplomacy presents it as a uniquely Western-European story. Conspicuously absent are Ottoman diplomats who, for nearly a century, represented their empire in Europe’s capitals. To overcome this historiographical lacuna, this project proposes a multi-sited enquiry, the first of its kind, into the social networks, intercultural amities, and habitus of Ottoman envoys and their equally ignored female relatives. It demonstrates how, despite Orientalist biases, Ottoman diplomats (Muslim and Christian) formed an integral if contested part of the 19th-century diplomatic milieu. As such, it will make a vital contribution to the New Diplomatic History.

    A double-edged sword: religious discourses and LGBTQIA+ inclusion
    dr. E. Alves Vieira (M), Universiteit Leiden

    This project examines the discourse of LGBTQIA+ inclusive churches in Brazil. More specifically, it studies how such discourses construct LGBTQIA+ identities amongst the churches' followers. Employing a thematic analysis, it scrutinizes the discourse of the Contemporary Christian Church of Brazil, supposedly the most welcoming church to LGBTQIA+ individuals in the country. Data is retrieved from the church's website, its YouTube Channel, and the video commenting sections. Analyzing how inclusive religious discourses influence LGBTQIA+ self-assertion and identity construction is a critical issue that deserves more scholarly attention since religion plays a vital role in controlling dissident sexualities and non-hegemonic gender identities.

    Who’s your daddy? The intergenerational paternal transmission of work-care ambitions and behaviours.
    dr. S.C.H. André (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Although fathers and mothers increasingly aspire to share work and care, this often seems not to happen in practice. But why? In this project we want to research who act as work-care role models for Dutch men. Fathers and their adult sons will be interviewed about how work-care ambitions and behaviour are passed down across generations, and how they are influenced by their environment. This project will fill this gap in the literature that focuses on women, opening possibilities for a future longitudinal study. Methodologically, this project combines interviews with a diary study to measure actual work-care behaviour.

    Could it really be me? Using personal deepfakes in charismatic leadership training
    dr. W.G. Andrews (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Charismatic leadership is highly effective at inspiring and uniting employees. We know that the behaviors used by charismatic leaders are trainable. However, current training programs are often extensive and costly which limits their accessibility to many of the people who could benefit from them. In this project, I develop and test an innovative online training that uses personal, charisma-enhanced deepfakes (manipulated videos showing a trainee behaving very charismatic) to inspire, motivate, and help people learn. The training aims to make charisma-training more accessible, less costly, more efficient, and more effective.

    Targeting fear generalization with exercise – it’s all about timing
    dr. V.A. van Ast (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    The ability to remember which cues in the environment predict the occurrence of a dangerous situation is important for survival. Sometimes however, situations resembling an earlier threatening event are inappropriately perceived as dangerous. Such fear-generalization characterizes post-traumatic stress- (PTSD) and anxiety-disorders. Animal studies suggest that exercise can alter non-fearful memories. This project will test the provoking hypothesis that exercise before trauma reduces fear-generalization, resulting in lowered PTSD-like memory symptoms, whereas exercise after trauma amplifies these. Insights could help promote resilience in occupations at risk for trauma-exposure (e.g., police) and might disprove popular belief that exercise can function as post-trauma relief.

    Seeds for transitions: Realising sustainable urban futures from the bottom up
    dr. C.E. Baibarac-Duignan (V), Universiteit Twente

    Driving urban transitions to a sustainable future is no longer an option but an imperative. Governments are becoming increasingly aware that key to achieving sustainability transitions is citizen engagement. Yet, it remains unclear how to ensure ongoing, proactive, and inclusive participation that puts communities in the driving seat. This project will explore a novel approach to increasing citizens’ capabilities to shape sustainable and desirable urban futures. Specifically, it will develop “civic classrooms” that address bottom-up initiatives as seeds for transitions. Through implementing this approach, the project will provide necessary tools and techniques for realising civic-oriented transitions to sustainable urban futures.

    Is pleasure the problem – or part of the solution? Investigating the role of hedonic goal pursuit in self-regulation
    dr. D. Becker (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Self-regulation research currently focuses on restraint. In this landscape, experiencing pleasure and enjoyment during hedonic activities (e.g., enjoying chocolate, relaxing on the sofa) is typically portrayed as something that should be avoided. There is, however, growing recognition that hedonic experiences may be part of – rather than a threat to – successful self-regulation. Inspired by those recent findings, the current research proposal is among the first to investigate how enhanced (vs. obstructed) hedonic experiences may actually support self-regulation. The predicted findings would have wide-reaching implications for the conceptualization of self-regulation, as well as for interventions improving self-regulation and health behavior.

    Global biodiversity and political fantasies, a match made on earth.
    dr. J.H. Behagel (M), Wageningen University & Research

    Global biodiversity policy holds increasingly ambitious political objectives, including establishing 30% of the Earth’s surface by 2030 as protected area. Such objectives embody political dreams for a future planet where we live in harmony with nature and respond to social fears of having to live on an increasingly inhabitable planet. How do such dreams and fears actually influence global policymaking and objectives? This project explores that question by studying these dreams and fears as a “political fantasy” that is made up out of the connection between our hidden social desires and the public stories we tell about an uncertain future.

    The Shifting Sands of Libya: A Global History of a Desert in Modern Times
    dr. R. Biasillo (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    In the context of limited scholarship on Libya’s past – whose main focus being Qadhafi and the oil industry – the role played by the desert has received little attention, despite its importance. This project aims to test whether it is possible to decentre political-economy approaches and propose a global history of Modern Libya based on its main ecological feature, Libyan desert which encompasses 95% of the country’s surface area. Did this environmental challenge, halt, or boost colonization, economic development, state formation and state collapse? Can a desert-focussed analysis of Libyan history offer an alternative narrative for the modern era?

    The potential of social media influencers to promote sustainable consumption patterns
    dr. S.C. Boerman (V), Wageningen University & Research

    To combat climate change and its consequences, it is vital that people change their behaviour and consume less. This project aims to explore the potential of social media influencers to promote sustainable consumption patterns amongst young adults (18-25 years old). First, a content analysis of influencer content aims to gain insights into the proportion of commercial vs. eco-content and the way influencers communicate about climate change, consumption, and sustainability. Second, an online experiment with 3 waves aims to understand which messages impact young adults’ climate change awareness, materialism, and consumption patterns, in the short- and long-term.

    Stepping Stones for Increasing Diversity and Inclusion in Dutch Children’s Literature
    dr. S. Van den Bossche (V), Tilburg University

    Responses to Disney’s "Encanto" (2021), recognising it as a milestone in representation (Verstaete 2022), resonate with pleas within Dutch children’s literature, which is predominantly white, to diversify its supply regarding racial and ethnic representation. As efforts to make children’s literature more inclusive hitherto have fallen short, the proposed intends to fast track racial and ethnic diversification by 1) training intermediaries to increase their awareness of its importance, and 2) investigating the possibility to develop an instrument for selection that highlights diversity in the existing supply, with an eye to aiding intermediaries in making more diversified and inclusive choices.

    Coming of Age on Instagram
    dr. J.D. Boy (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Most research on young adults’ social media use theorizes about them; this project will create theory with them. It will draw on the expertise of young adult users (aged 19–25 years) of Instagram in the Netherlands to shed light on how members of this age group work with and against the platform to define their place in the world. Using a unique mix of ethnographic methods, open data, and citizen science, the project promises to enhance both public and scholarly understandings of the platform society’s anxieties, aspirations, norms and practices.

    A description and reconstruction of the verb morphology of Awapit; towards a methodology to reconstruct the North-Andean linguistic history.
    dr. M. Bruil (V), Universiteit Leiden

    The South-American indigenous languages remaining today enclose important linguistic evidence to recover the continents population history. Linguistic studies have generally taken a broad approach with respect to this historical challenge. However, I will conduct an in-depth description and reconstruction of the verb morphology of Awapit, a Barbacoan language spoken on the Ecuadorian-Colombian border. This study will be used to judge whether the similarities found between the Barbacoan family, in the North, and the Quechuan family, introduced by the Incan empire from the South, are due to language contact or to a genealogical relationship.

    The Nexus between Women Peace and Security, Transboundary Waters and Environmental Peacebuilding in the South Caucasus
    dr. R.B. Burke (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    Water underpins people’s human rights and security. Water is a conflict-driver in the South Caucasus. However, water has been neglected in peace processes. Additionally, women have been effectively excluded from the peace-building space. The SC’s Women Peace and Security (WPS) resolutions stress the importance of women’s participation in peace-building. The interconnections between environmental peace-building, water and WPS are under-explored. The project aims to address this gap. It aims to better understand factors that enable/prevent women’s participation in water security dialogue and its transboundary management.

    Governing the Digital Revolution in Agriculture: Toward Inclusive Data Governance in Kenya
    M.C. Canfield (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Digital technologies are transforming the agricultural sector, promising more efficient and sustainable food systems. Yet farmers have raised significant concerns over who controls data generated by digitization. In response, new forms of data governance are being developed to enable farmers’ and citizens’ trust in these technologies. Yet little is known about how data governance operates in practice, especially in the global South where small-scale farmers predominate. This socio-legal study analyzes current practices of agricultural data governance in Kenya—a country that has been at the forefront of digitization in sub-Saharan Africa—to assess the challenges of constructing inclusive data governance.

    From Skate Zone to TikTok: how Social Media affects Public Space.
    dr. mr. D.A.M. Chevalier (V), Universiteit Leiden

    In urban studies, material public space is conventionally considered as three-dimensional. With the advent of social media however, a fourth dimension can be identified; a virtual dimension that is spatially and temporally interlaced with physical space. What is the impact of this virtual dimension on the societal function of public space? This is researched theoretically and empirically, using urban sport skateboarding at the Skate-Zone in Amsterdam as case-study. Skateboarding is exemplary both of the embodied sensory use of three-dimensional physical space and the intricate engagement with the virtual realm through social media. The project set-up is explorative, interdisciplinary and multi-method.

    Crowdfunding and industrial development
    dr. N. Cortinovis (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    Since the 2000s, crowdfunding (CF) platforms provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to make their innovative ideas become reality. Existing research suggests resources from CF often reach regions and industries typically ignored by conventional investors, helping mobilizing new resources for innovation. From the point of view of economic geography, this gives CF the ground-breaking potential to facilitate the emergence of new industries even in less-dynamic regions and industries. In this project, my objective is to develop a suitable database and to study the role CF in the emergence and development of new industries in US counties.

    From philosophy to action and back again: addressing epistemic justice in the real world of international development
    dr. S.J.R. Cummings (V), Wageningen University & Research

    Building on the more conceptually developed, philosophical framework of epistemic (knowledge-related) injustice, this project will develop a new comprehensive action-oriented framework of epistemic justice, using the example of international development where, for example, the knowledge of local people is consistently undervalued. The new framework will be validated through two case studies: one with a global network of development scholars; and another with a prominent social movement in South Africa. The findings will be used to develop an academic toolkit of methodologies and approaches that can be used to research and support epistemic justice, applicable in many different scientific disciplines.

    Borderless counterterrorism: mapping cross-border cooperation in Europe
    dr. S.D. D'Amato (V), Universiteit Leiden

    This project compares and explains dynamics of cross-border cooperation among European actors in the field of counterterrorism (CT). Due to their asymmetric and networked nature, terrorist organizations challenge states in their ability to respond to the threat within and beyond their borders, increasing the pressure for cooperative behaviour. Cross-border security initiatives has skyrocket worldwide, granting to borders a new relevance as geo-graphical spaces for counterterrorism cooperation. Yet, no systematic data is available to analyze how cross-border cooperation works in practice. How are European actors – EU and beyond- cooperating cross-border? What practices, initiatives and measures have implemented and among who?

    Pragmatic and hesitant coexistence in realms of difference. Comparing (dense) living encounters in Rotterdam, Luxembourg and Johannesburg
    dr. R. Dittgen (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    If urban economic hubs primarily attract and retain residents based on monetary criteria, such cities are also characterised by exponential living costs and limited accommodation possibilities. Due to reduced residential options and subsequent logics of compromise, many urbanites end up staying in apartment blocks. In scenarios which are driven by individual incentives, alienation and varying levels of attachment to place, how do residents from diverse backgrounds interact? This comparative research focuses on intra-building relations between locals, established and recent migrants in highly diverse neighbourhoods in Rotterdam, Luxembourg and Johannesburg to unpack the layers of this pragmatic coexistence.

    The opportunities and threats of societal impact – an experiment in method
    dr. G. Dix (M), Universiteit Twente

    Societal impact has become an unavoidable, yet divisive, phenomenon in science and science policy nowadays. It could be an opportunity for policymakers to steer researchers towards the challenges that really matter or a threat in excluding politically less salient solutions. Social scientific research on research is unable to settle the matter due to its risk-averseness in trying out unfamiliar methods. This project seeks to break new grounds by taking a big methodological risk. It experiments with quantitative and qualitative data analysis to discover similarities, differences and complementarities in these methods in understanding the opportunities and threats of impact.

    The Peace Quartet. How playing music together shapes prosocial behavior
    dr. N.J. van Doesum (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Playing music together can contribute to peacebuilding. That is the hopeful idea behind initiatives that bring musicians from conflicting countries together to play concerts. A renowned example is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. However, we don’t know if and how this actually works. A possible explanation is that a good performance requires concentrated listening to each other, which will ultimately enhance mutual understanding. Participants will perform better in perspective-taking and will perceive the other less as the enemy. Using a masterclass setting, I will test this experimentally by comparing young musicians with a control group.

    Neuroprediction: Unraveling risk for antisocial behavior in youth.
    dr. J.D.M. van Dongen (V), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    The teenage years are turbulent, during which the brain undergoes a huge transformation, and youth experiment with opposing authority in a healthy way. However, serious antisocial behavior among adolescents, such as violence and weapon use, is increasing, posing a threat to our society. In this innovative project, efficiency of neural communication in the brain is studied and whether this efficiency in communication is predictive of youth antisocial behavior. Better understanding of risk factors in the brain as mechanisms of change for antisocial behavior is key, and contributes to better prevention, and the development of interventions against these behaviors in youth.

    Caring for Ghada: How a practical, politically-sensitive care ethics can benefit healthcare workers in conflict settings
    P. Dronkers (M), Universiteit voor Humanistiek

    Providing healthcare in conflict settings is a morally complex endeavour. Classical forms of ethics suggest that general principles, such as respecting autonomy, can offer guidance. Yet, principle-based ethics fails to adequately address power inequalities, experiences of moral distress, and conflict dynamics. As a young, innovative discipline, care ethics starts normative reflection with studying actual care practices and the moral challenges people experience. This project examines the potential of care ethics to research and normatively reflect on how healthcare workers in conflict settings negotiate the moral complexity in their work, and the capacity of this approach to provide context-sensitive moral guidance.

    DeCon - Dynamics of Public Democracy Contestation
    dr. O. Eisele (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Democracy is said to be in crisis. The DeCon project analyses this crisis by looking into the contestation of explicit democratic norms and values in public debate. DeCon extends the literature as similar work focuses usually on explaining vote choice or on the crisis of liberal democracy specifically. We conduct a content analysis of opinions about democracy raised in the news media in the Netherlands and the United States during the pandemic. Results of this analysis will be used to create publicly available resources for automated content analysis, allowing larger scale studies in the future.

    Lingering attachment to the deceased in prolonged grief: A short-term longitudinal study
    dr. M.C. Eisma (M), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    A minority of bereaved individuals develops severe and persistent grief, termed prolonged grief disorder (PGD). Bereaved adults attachment style (i.e., how one generally relates to others) is proposed to be a risk factor for PGD, yet I found no evidence for this idea in a recent meta-analysis. Therefore, I propose a novel theory that holds that not attachment style per se, but rather lingering attachment to the deceased and weak attachment to living others lead to PGD. In a short-term longitudinal study, I will test this idea for the first time.

    The use of solicited oral diaries in research on workers who are vulnerable to subtle abuse and exploitation
    dr. A. Eleveld (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Qualitative semi-structured interviews often fail to capture practices of subtle abuse and exploitation in dependent work relations, especially when the interviewed workers do not sufficiently experience these malpractices at a conscious level. This research project tests whether the innovative qualitative method of solicited oral diaries is able to overcome this shortcoming in a pilot study on solo self-employed platform workers. If this method leads to a better understanding of subtle abuse and exploitation, the method will be applied in a larger research project on dependent work relations in which workers are vulnerable to subtle abuse and exploitation.

    Giving a guaranteed benefit to financially strained decision-makers improves their choices.
    dr. A. Festjens (V), Maastricht University

    Financial constrains triggers a wide variety of counterproductive behaviors - that is, it leads to a preference for a smaller immediate, safe, or nearby benefit over a larger delayed, risky, or distal one. This is explained by assuming that constraint impedes cognitive functioning. Instead, I posit that these choices are made because constrained decision-makers overwhelmingly aspire to receive something now, for sure, or nearby. So when the larger choice option would not have left them empty-handed, I predict they would have acted similarly as the non-constrained. My results may thus improve existing choice architectures and radically shift current academic paradigms.

    Borrowing more than money: the importance of parental experience for second-generation student borrowers.
    dr. A. de Gayardon (V), Universiteit Twente

    The uptake of student loans globally has been growing in line with the expansion of higher education. In many countries, we now have second-generation borrowers: students whose parents also borrowed to pay for their higher education. Yet, no research has explored the interaction between parents’ experiences of student loans and their children’s higher education financial decisions. To fill this research gap, this study targets parents in an existing Dutch research panel survey, that regularly surveys 5,000 households. It investigates specifically financial attitudes and decisions around student loans within the family.

    Identifying the most promising exercise interventions as treatments for pediatric ADHD symptoms
    H. Gerger (V), Erasmus MC

    We propose a research project that investigates the potential of exercise as treatment for ADHD in children and adolescents. Among others, the occurrence of side effects with medication treatment, and long waiting lists for specialized psychotherapy, prevents many children with ADHD from receiving the treatment they need. Exercise has the potential to complement the list of recommended ADHD treatments. In our project, we will use a mix of advanced analytical techniques (so-called network meta-analysis) and input from patients, their parents, teachers, and GPs to explore possible effects of exercise in treating ADHD in children and adolescents.

    Moral Empire: Belgium and the Global South (1830-2022)
    dr. F.P.L. Gerits (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    This project will make the innovative and highly speculative claim that Belgian elites and politicians from the independence of the Belgian state in 1830 onwards harbored the ambition to become an imperial superpower. Instead of King Leopold II's reign of terror and the actions of missionaries and corporations, this project examines how Belgian politicians and political groups sought to propagate Catholic modernity and how they were undermined by the rise of anticolonial ideologies, such as pan-Africanism. It is the first political history of Belgian colonialism.

    Speaking of non-response: Understanding survey non-participation from the perspective of non-respondents
    dr. M. van Gerner-Haan (V), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    The downward trend in survey response rates is a major threat for data quality because it may cause non-response bias leading to distorted conclusions. A multidisciplinary approach, in which theoretical insights from multiple research fields are combined, is necessary to unravel the mechanisms behind survey (non)-participation. In this project, a first step is taken in the development of a new theory specifically aimed at survey participation, in which current technological and social trends are given a place. By speaking with non-respondents about their reasons for survey non-participation, the first essential insights for this new theory will be obtained.

    Sonic environmentalism and Japanese intangible heritage
    A. Giolai (M), Universiteit Leiden

    How do cultural conceptions of sound and nature influence ecological preservation? What happens when the natural resources allowing artistic intangible cultural heritage to thrive are threatened by environmental crises? What determines the success or failure of political alliances working to protect those resources? This project wants to answer these questions providing comparative insight from Japanese case studies. Combining critical research on heritage with environmental humanities and sonic studies, it investigates the power of sonic knowledge in a non-Western advanced and precarious society. The ambition is to propose a new approach to intangible cultural heritage through embodied and auditory research methods.

    The secret life of writers: Dutch intelligence agencies and the literary world during the Cold War
    dr. L.J. Ham (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    American, Soviet Russian and East German security and intelligence agencies had considerable influence on the literary world during the Cold War. They set up literary cover organizations, recruited writers as informants and gathered information about them. But did this also happen in the Netherlands? This project is the first to explore this question, by digging through archives for traces of intelligence activities surrounding literary authors and organizations. Specifically, the project centers on the literary relations between the Netherlands and two areas which were particularly interesting for intelligence agencies during the early Cold War: Central and Eastern Europe and Indonesia.

    The (Un)intended Consequences of Disinformation as a Discursive and Informational Disorder
    dr. M. Hameleers (M), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Considering that concerns about misinformation abound, it is important to explore whether people arrive at proportional estimates of mis- and disinformation’s presence, and re-establish trust when misinformation is seen as a salient threat. This project therefore approaches misinformation as a wider disorder that involves the weaponization of distrust, and a legitimacy crisis of reliable information. Using surveys and experiments, I (1) explore the proportionality of concerns about false information, (2) the effects of emphasizing the threats of false information, and (3) the effectiveness of digital media literacy interventions relativizing threats of mis- and disinformation whilst enhancing trust in reliable information.

    Direct and fast measurements of neural activation - Towards new frontiers of human neuroimaging
    dr. L. Hausfeld (M), Maastricht University

    Since its discovery 30 years ago, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) significantly extended our understanding of the human mind by measuring metabolic changes as a proxy of neural activity. While offering excellent spatial detail, these responses are slow (4-6 seconds). An exciting new approach in mice allowed fMRI measurements directly reflecting neural spiking, yielding excellent spatial and temporal resolution (5 milliseconds). I will work on bringing this technique to applications in humans and measure neural responses to visual and auditory stimulation. Successful transition would enable a fundamentally new way for studying human behaviour and cognition in healthy and clinical populations.

    Reconceptualising Napoleonic Resource Extraction for War: Prussia, 1806-1814, and the Provincialisation of France.
    dr. M.E. Hay (M), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Since the war in Ukraine, the question of financing war and reconstruction has returned to the forefront of academic inquiry. The PI has developed an innovative methodology to studying resource extraction for war at a watershed moment in the history of war, the Napoleonic age, which ushered in the era of total war. Through testing this new methodology to the case study of Prussia, 1806-1814, not only will the scholar critically engage with historiographical debates on the durability and decline of the Napoleonic order in Europe, but also will one be able to add historical depth to current day debates.

    Tastes of the Past: Studying food history and heritage of the early modern Low Countries through reconstructions of historical tastes
    dr. M.M.A. Hendriksen (V), Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen

    Just like books, paintings, and music, historical foodways are an important part of our history and heritage. But simply reading recipes won’t do the trick: it is hard to understand how historical ingredients and dishes tasted, and how people in the past experienced and valued such tastes. In this project, we aim to develop a standardized protocol to reconstruct and evaluate historical tastes, and to connect contemporary to historical evaluations of taste. This new method will help us understand our food history and heritage better, and will provide new historical information on shifts in tastes.

    Cry me a river: improving human stress research with tear-based measurements
    dr. D.M.J. Hernaus (M), Maastricht University

    Measurements of so-called stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline, offer profound insights into the impact of stress on us, humans. However, it can be challenging to precisely measure multiple stress hormones at the same time using standard approaches (e.g., in blood or saliva). The researcher will investigate if we can use tear fluid to precisely measure multiple stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline, associated by-products) in a single procedure. If successful, tear fluid will become a simple, cost-effective, and potentially more precise method to measure functionality of stress systems for a worldwide community of social and biological scientists.

    Optimizing sample size in psychological science through sequential analyses
    dr. T. Heyman (M), Universiteit Leiden

    If you want to make a statement about a population (e.g., all people in the world), you need to draw as sample that is large enough, but you also do not want to needlessly waste time and money. The current project investigates how to arrive at an optimal sample size using so-called sequential analyses. To this end, existing data from published studies within psychology will be re-analysed to see how future research can become more efficient, and whether sequential testing could have an influence on the resulting outcomes.

    Does our relationship with social technology change as we age?
    dr. E.S. Heyselaar (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Social technology (technology that we can interact with, e.g., chatbots and robots) is developing at a rapid pace. Everyone has at least one social appliance in their household (e.g., amazon alexa, siri) and that average will keep increasing in the coming years. The development of this technology is based on key studies conducted in the early 1990s (CASA), when only a few people had a personal computer. Are these theories still applicable today, in a time when social technology has become a key part of our society, or is the theory outdated?

    Housing deprivation beyond affordability
    dr. C. Hochstenbach (M), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Like many other countries, the Netherlands is experiencing a rapidly worsening housing crisis. Inequalities on the housing market are deepening and growing numbers of households fail to find adequate housing. While most studies focus on housing affordability or the ability to buy a house, this project moves beyond this all too narrow focus. It intervenes in the literature by introducing the concept of cumulative housing deprivation, illuminating how people may experience different housing problems all at once: housing can be unaffordable, insecure, unsuitable, unsustainable and low quality. This project empirically unravels how these issues overlap and interact, impacting individual lives.

    From Colourwashing to Diversity Champion: Using machine learning to examine the relationship between organizational diversity communication and diversity outcomes.
    dr. J. Hofhuis (M), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    ‘Colourwashing’ is the practice of communicating positive diversity related messages with the goal to increase an organization’s reputation, without a relation to actual or intended diversity activities. Colourwashing increases public scepticism towards diversity communication, and harms existing efforts to increase workplace inclusion. This project uses machine learning algorithms to generate datasets on the prevalence of diversity communication in social media posts and annual reports of multinational organizations, and compares them to actual diversity outcomes. This will provide new knowledge on the how and why of colourwashing in organizational communication, and how to reduce it in the future.

    The role of mobility and key-populations in HIV transmission and control in sub-Saharan Africa
    dr. J.A.C. Hontelez (M), Erasmus MC

    The HIV epidemic in Africa is still spreading, despite the availability of effective prevention and treatment options. I aim to demonstrate that the key in controlling the spread of HIV lies in a better understanding of the importance of mobility and high-risk populations in driving the spread of HIV. I will develop a new, highly innovative mathematical modeling tool that can simulate sexual behavior and HIV transmission in multiple countries at the district level in parallel, including their interactions by simulating population mobility. I will use the model to demonstrate the importance of population mobility in HIV transmission.

    Iron-clad blood, iron-clad mind? The effect of low iron levels on cognitive and mental well-being.
    dr. E.M.J. Huis in 't Veld (V), Tilburg University

    Low iron levels are detrimental for your health, and possibly even for cognitive and mental well-being. As these tests are invasive and expensive, large and high quality data on how iron may impact your well-being is lacking. Furthermore, small studies show that the colour of your nails may also be used to analyse iron levels. In this project, we will assess hemoglobin values, nail images, cognitive functioning, and depressive symptoms data from a large, heterogeneous and healthy sample and 2) develop a prototype of an artificial intelligence driven app able to assess iron levels through photographs taken with your smartphone.

    Pretenders for the Printing Press. A New Conception of Historical Facts
    dr. P.A. Huistra (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    In times of fake news and alternative historical facts, historians are increasingly confronted with disputes about the facts of the past. So far, we lack a good way to deal with such issues. This project therefore proposes the novel conception of networked historical facts, that it will submit to an empirical test. The case study will be the nineteenth-century controversy over the invention of the printing press. The result of this project will be a better understanding of how historical facts come into existence, and a way to break stalemates on historical facts.

    Masking the Machine: A Cultural History of the Graphical User Interface
    dr. J.B. Hung (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    Computers used to be operated by text commands that required specialist knowledge. This changed with the introduction of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) in the 1980s. Graphical icons such as the “desktop” or the “recycle bin” translated complicated programming codes into easily understandable metaphors. This made computers accessible to common users. However, GUIs are not neutral carriers of information: just like any cultural artifact, they carry messages of their own and structure the way we see the world. This project investigates the GUI and its history as part of a long tradition of human-machine interfaces to uncover its cultural impact.

    Keeping it real: Experimenting with renderings for fictitious infrastructures
    dr. M. van den Hurk (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    Plans for new infrastructures often spark public controversy. Governments present renderings to generate support for these projects: conceptual illustrations that employ appealing imaginations of the future. Renderings often contain unrealistic or overly optimistic features, which makes them a potentially powerful instrument of misrepresentation and a threat to accountability. This study conducts an experiment to detect, explain and predict the effects of renderings on the public perception of infrastructure plans. The results will demonstrate how malleable public opinion is with manipulative imagery and how important it is that governments keep it real when representing future projects.

    Embodied teamwork
    dr. R.I. Hutter (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Teamwork has been studied from two different starting points. One framework departs from cognitive processes, the other from action (or ‘embodied’ processes). In teamwork people often have to think AND act, however, and that is certainly the case for police officers. This research aims to integrate the cognitive and embodied views on teamwork and to test different methods for analysing teamwork of police officers. Desired results are: a better understanding of coordination between officers, an integrated framework for teamwork that incorporates constructs from cognition and embodiment, and a comparison of methods to analyse temporal behavioural patterns in teams.

    Developing and Validating a Generalized Structural Equation Model for Social Network Data
    dr. T.D. Jorgensen (M), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Accurate theories of psychological processes must include interpersonal interactions, as measured by social-network variables. How to incorporate their complex structure into familiar theory-testing frameworks (e.g., structural equation modeling: SEM) is a topic on the methodological cutting-edge. I propose a two-stage estimation approach. First, estimate correlations of social-network data with person-level (e.g., body image) or group-level (e.g., school climate) covariates, then use SEM to explain those correlations. This innovation would empower researchers to improve their theoretical models of psychosocial processes (e.g., how peer conversations affect disordered eating) and identify effective interventions (e.g., whether antibullying programs work on specific victim–bully pairs).

    Sex and gender differences in stress- and reward-related predictors of prospective alcohol use in hazardous drinkers
    dr. A.M. Kaag (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    While one third of the individuals with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a women, the number of women with an AUD is on the rise. Unfortunately, sex and gender differences have been structurally ignored in addiction research, impeding the development of sex- and gender tailored prevention strategies. This project aims to investigate sex and gender differences in the relationship between stress- and reward-related craving and prospective alcohol use in a population of hazardous drinkers. To achieve this, lab-based measurements examining stress- and alcohol cue reactivity will be combined with daily smartphone measurements of stress, craving and alcohol use.

    Intellectual self-regulation, academic labor, and scholarly publishing as a business: Theorizing the political economy of peer review
    dr. W. Kaltenbrunner (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Peer review is regularly perceived as flawed and in need of reform. At the same time, it has seldom been the object of inductive theory-building. To enable a novel conceptual view on the systemic problems of peer review, this project will analyze how peer review as a cognitive operation is shaped by its economic organization. Namely: as a form of academic labor that is embedded in various incentive structures and in commercial structures of scholarly publishing. Empirically, the project will draw on interviews with editors and reviewers from three different publishing outlets in psychology, each characterized by a distinct profile.

    Unravelling the Rule of Law: A Machine Learning Approach
    dr. J.K. Kantorowicz (M), Universiteit Leiden

    There are ongoing scholarly and policy debates about what the rule of law is and was historically. This project will apply cutting-edge machine learning techniques to demonstrate how the meaning of the rule of law has changed over time and whether the understanding of this concept differs across jurisdictions. Likewise, it will provide a novel way for creating the rule of law indicators and re-evaluating existing country rankings in terms of adherence to the rule of law. The project will lead to key substantive and methodological advances in the field of law.

    “My Life, My Decision”: Trust issues in Human-Technology Shared Health Decision-Making (MINDED)
    A. Karahanoglu (V), Universiteit Twente

    People use technology to self-manage their physical and mental health. Many things can go wrong if people over trust technology when their knowledge is not enough to understand their decisions. This project examines what can go wrong when people are given more opportunities to make technology-shared decisions to self-manage their health. Knowledge gained from this project will aid the development of personal health technologies for areas such as chronic disease management and injury prevention.

    Swiping risk – Do victims and perpetrators of sexual violence swipe right for the wrong people?
    dr. J. Karsten (V), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    Online dating apps have amassed great popularity, but may increase risk of sexual violence. This risk may be increased by unfavourable choices in matches, by both victims and perpetrators. In this study, we will ask participants, with or without a history of sexual victimization or sexually transgressive behaviour, to ‘swipe’ their interest in online dating profiles. The study explores whether people with a history of victimization are more likely to select people with a history of transgressive behaviour and vice versa, what cues they base their preference on, and whether the relationship is influenced by their goal in online dating.

    Beware of the shortcut? Investigating the legal risks for corporations of using greenhouse gas offsets to achieve net-zero targets
    dr. C. Kaupa (M), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Corporations increasingly pursue net-zero emission strategies. They frequently rely on offsets to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions that they are unable or unwilling to cut. Recent judgments suggest that the use of offsets entails significant legal risks for corporations because their climate benefits are far more uncertain than those of genuine emission reductions. These risks have not yet been researched, even though they are liable to undermine corporate net-zero strategies at a crucial moment. This project aims to close this research gap, investigating whether offsets are a valid way for corporations to achieve net-zero, or a legally problematic shortcut.

    Parenting Diversity
    dr. E. Keskiner Delgen (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Increasingly children in the Netherlands are attending primary schools in diverse settings where racial, ethnic, religious, gender and sexual differences form their daily reality. Accordingly, parents and/or caregivers are continuously faced with diversity related challenges in their parenting practices. Most studies on diversity experiences focus on parents with a migration background, but we know very little of how parents without a migration background, deal with everyday challenges of diversity. This innovative study focuses on how the parenting practices around diversity are formed among parents without a migration background conducting a multi-sided comparative fieldwork in two cities.

    Differences between women and men in work and career utilization: how social network dynamics affect work performance and leadership advancement.
    dr. J. Khattab (V), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions. One important explanation is that women have less valuable social networks compared to men. What we don’t know however is how women form and utilize their networks as compared with men. In this research project, I unpack these social networks dynamics in the setting of a United Nations simulation. Using data from social network sensors that capture connectivity with others and record conversations, I demonstrate how women’s compared to men’s social networks are created, how they are utilized, and how they benefit leadership advancement and work performance.

    Little lies, big impact? Co-creating an age-appropriate instrument to assess young children’s attitudes on parental lying and the effects on trust.
    dr. R. Kok (V), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Lying to children is common in families, especially in middle childhood. Many parents find some types of lies acceptable, but express concern about its impact on parent-child trust. Although children have the cognitive and moral capacity to evaluate lying, no studies to date have captured children’s attitudes on parental lying. This project develops an online age-appropriate instrument, in co-creation with a child panel and a game designer, to study children’s attitudes (8-12yrs) about parental lying and its effect on parent-child trust. This measure will be open access published and showcased among researchers specialized in lying and moral development.

    Denial or dutifulness: Dutch courts and decisions of international human rights courts
    dr. J. Krommendijk (M), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Decisions of international (human rights) courts are increasingly contested, also by national courts who are essential for ensuring compliance with such decisions. In times of backlash, it is crucial to understand how, when and why national courts engage with international decisions. The Netherlands, where a high level of engagement is expected, serves as an ideal most-likely case to test seven potential explanations that have received limited empirical attention. The structured case law analysis and interviews with judges lead to an in-depth and interdisciplinary understanding of engagement with international decisions. Insights contribute to a better functioning of the (inter)national legal order.

    AnNoBias: Understanding and overcoming annotation bias in crowdsourced datasets
    dr. A. C. Kroon (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Researchers in the social sciences and humanities are increasingly using heterogeneous groups of crowd coders to manually annotate research materials (such as social media posts). To guarantee the quality of these datasets, it is imperative to avoid systematic errors (bias) in the annotation process. AnNoBias investigates 1. the causes of annotation bias at the individual (demographic and cognitive characteristics) and task (content and task design characteristics) level, 2. the consequences of annotation bias for research conclusions, and 3. the extent to which a tailored annotator training can reduce such biases. Finally, AnNoBias formulates guidelines for quality control in crowd-coded datasets.

    Journalists, politicians, and scientists in the (on)line of fire: Understanding variations of hateful communication
    prof. S. Kruikemeier (V), Wageningen University & Research

    Scientists, journalists, and politicians are frequent targets of extreme forms of threats and intimidation, in particular on social media. The consequences of such hateful communication can be detrimental for individuals and society. Moreover, exposure to hateful communication can lead to dissatisfaction towards (political) institutions and negative attitudes towards and decreasing trust in science, news, and politicians. The overarching objective of this proposed project is to understand variations of communication targeted at scientists, journalists, and politicians in the Netherlands and the United States. The project will focus on social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

    Corporate social responsibility: making it a legal obligation for all EU companies
    prof. F.G. Laagland (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Through cross-border supply chains, many European companies violate human rights, labour rights and environmental standards. Children in Bangladesh, for example, make t-shirts for popular fashion brands. Currently, the European legislator is preparing legislation obliging the largest European companies to investigate how products are being made by their suppliers in developing countries. However, the legislation addresses only 1 percent of the European market, while the vast majority of companies have been excluded. Addressing this regulatory gap, this project designs a legal framework, expanding the coverage of the proposed legislation through the use of a European system of contractual agreements.

    Mapping Colonialities: A situated history of the planter’s chair
    dr. R.J. Lee (V), Technische Universiteit Delft

    This project investigates global architectural histories by following a nineteenth-century colonial chair, called the "planter's chair," around the world. The planter's chair was mostly used by men for recreation and was connected to certain types of spaces. Although it was a colonial object, it was adopted by local elites. Many are still in use today. A digital mapping tool will document the chair's locations. Archival research and a set of oral histories will explore the changing meaning of the chair through time, from the colonial era to the present day.

    Attention Discrimination in Performance Evaluation
    dr. B. van Leeuwen (M), Tilburg University

    For accurate performance evaluation, managers must pay attention to workers’ efforts. However, because people cannot pay attention to everyone, managers must allocate their scarce attention among workers. This project will address how managers allocate attention in the workplace and how selective attention affects performance evaluations. I will study whether managers engage in “attention discrimination” by paying less attention to certain workers. If so, these workers may receive less accurate evaluations, being detrimental to their careers and distorting the selection of talent. This project focuses on gender and provides new tools to study attention allocation in the workplace.

    The social nature of conspiracy thinking
    dr. G.J. Lelieveld (M), Universiteit Leiden

    This research posits that conspiracy thinking has an important social function for connecting with others. The first aim is to test whether being socially excluded causes people to endorse conspiracy theories to fulfil their need to belong. The second aim is to examine whether adopting conspiracy beliefs is indeed an effective way for excluded individuals to reduce exclusion feelings. Conspiracy thinking can reduce feelings of exclusion by the group of conspiracy thinkers, but may actually fuel feelings of exclusion by society. By examining determinants and consequences of conspiracy thinking, this research provides crucial insights into ways to reduce conspiracy thinking.

    Exploring Political Long-Termism (EXPLOT)
    dr. B. Leruth (M), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    Long-term challenges such as climate change and the ageing population are becoming increasingly urgent to address. Yet, thinking long-term is one of the most difficult tasks citizens and policy-makers face, as they deal with uncertainties, risks, and electoral constraints in a world driven by political myopia. Crucially, our understanding of political long-termism, namely the conscious choice to prioritise the future consequences of today’s political actions and decisions over their short-term benefits, remains limited. EXPLOT aims at understanding how and why politicians and citizens favour political long-termism, and explores whether different ‘cultures’ of political long-termism coexist across Europe.

    Household Food Waste: Are Supermarket Price Promotions to Blame?
    dr. A.I.J.G. van Lin (M), Tilburg University

    Price promotions like “buy-one-get-one-free” deals are abundant in grocery retailing and many households buy on promotion to save on groceries. Yet, price promotions are also often criticized for causing household food waste. Such criticism rests on the assumption that larger-than-usual purchases are excessive and, therefore, inherently wasteful. Yet, this logic has never been tested empirically. In this project, I combine unique household panel data covering all grocery purchases of a representative set of households with survey data on usage of products, including wasting. Together, these data will show whether price promotions are to blame for household food waste.

    MaPping the collective wIsdom of online rare disease communities: a Patient-driven Algorithm (the PIPA project)
    dr. A.J. Linn (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    A billion individuals are affected by a rare disease. Because medical knowledge about the disease is lacking, these individuals rely strongly on social media to share their knowledge about the disease. This shared knowledge is often beyond what is known in the medical literature and is highly unexploited in research. This project collects, bundles, and analyzes this knowledge by developing an open-source algorithm that maps the collective wisdom about rare diseases on social media. This project contributes to the knowledge of rare diseases and allows individuals to understand better and manage their rare diseases.

    How do people decide how they feel? Response processes in Experience Sampling Method studies
    dr. D.F. Maciejewski (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    The Experience Sampling Method (ESM), a technique to study emotions in daily life, is booming among researchers and clinicians. To justify its use, valid measurements are crucial, but recently concerns about the validity of ESM have been voiced. The current project proposes a person-specific approach to identify how individuals interpret and respond to questions about their emotions in ESM studies. Specifically, it will identify how consistent individuals are over time and how they differ from each other in these response processes. Results will generate new hypotheses regarding response processes and provide practical implications for researchers and clinicians using ESM.

    Why Females Stay Despite Environmental Risk: Intergenerational Perspectives (FeStay)
    dr. B. Mallick (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    In the climate debate, it is often assumed that people affected by climate risks migrate elsewhere, both domestically and internationally. However, more than 85 percent of people at risk appear to remain, despite exposure to many risks and dangers. It is mainly the female 'non-migrants' who have managed to hold their own for many generations. Employing an inductive approach and intergenerational perspective, FeStay focuses on a better understanding of how female non-migrants in Bangladesh deal with climate risks and extreme conditions. The research results in local action plans and recommendations for Dutch policy aimed at 'safe and liveable deltas'.

    Why do adults change their minds? Developing a new empirical strategy for studying adult belief change
    dr. K. Manevska (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    It is often thought that people, once they reach adulthood, do not change their beliefs anymore. Yet, examples of belief change abound: adults who start believing in conspiracy theories, become disaffected from politics, or now acknowledge institutional racism. The bulk of empirical studies on adult belief change, however, finds evidence for stability rather than change. This might be because customary empirical strategies to study adult belief change are inadequate. This project develops a new empirical strategy for studying adult belief change, especially geared towards the comparative study of a broad range of beliefs, including the collection of country-comparative panel data.

    Detection of low-literacy: Assessing visual word recognition with Speech-to-Text technology
    dr. H. Marien (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    Low-literacy is a big problem, but it is hard to find people who are functionally illiterate. Current testing methods are very invasive and intimidating to the target group, because it requires reading which is very uncomfortable. However, most people are skilled in spoken language. The question central in this proposal is whether it is possible to detect low-literacy through speech. This would ease discomfort and increase detection rates of low-literacy. Speech-to-text technology will be used to examine to what degree people are able to recognize their own uttered words in text form and whether recognition scores predict their literacy level.

    DeLaw - EU energy law barriers to and drivers for a degrowth pathway
    dr. R.J.G. Mauger (M), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    In order to limit climate change, a much faster decarbonisation is needed. Yet, turning to renewable energy sources is not sufficient; energy consumption must steeply decrease too, especially in developed countries. Therefore, this research aims to identify the barriers to and drivers for a degrowth pathway within energy law at European Union level. Focusing on the whole electricity chain, from production to final consumption, this research would allow pinpointing specific legal provisions that have to be expanded, amended or removed. This would facilitate future lawmakers’ action towards a carbon-neutral economy.

    Digital governance and accountability for climate adaptation: a case study of the use of the E-musrenbang participatory planning tool in a climate-exposed district of Surabaya, Indonesia
    R.P. McDermott (M), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    The accountability of governance arrangements for climate adaptation is little theorized, let alone having benefitted from empirical work to investigate what it entails in practice and under what conditions it is achieved. This is particularly the case with respect to the increased proliferation of digital forms of governance. This study examines the implications for accountability within adaptation planning and policy of e-musrenbang, a digital governance tool utilised in Indonesia, focusing on districts of Surabaya exposed to coastal flooding and sea-level rise. It will provide greater understanding of how accountability can be enhanced across a range of similar contexts.

    That’s shocking?! The dis‘app’earance of online labor platforms as a career shock to non-standard workers in the gig economy
    dr. J.G. Meijerink (M), Universiteit Twente

    The careers of gig workers that work via platforms like Uber and Deliveroo are non-standard, precarious and hyper-flexible. They move from one short-term gig to the other and can be easily laid off. At the same time, as independent contractors, they learn to cope with the uncertainty that platform-based gig work creates. So far, little is known about the flexible careers in the novel context of the gig economy. By adopting a ‘career shock’ lens, the proposed research examines how gig workers experience a sudden disappearance/withdrawal of a platform they work with and which new/alternative job(s) they embark on afterwards.

    Let’s talk about climate change: Using virtual reality and a social network approach to stimulate climate change conversations
    dr. M.H.C. Meijers (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Individuals play an important role in mitigating climate change by adopting climate friendly behavior and by engaging in interpersonal communication (i.e., conversations) regarding climate change. However, little is known about how to stimulate climate change conversations. The current project therefore investigates whether a virtual reality environment can kickstart climate change conversations. Furthermore, it is investigated to what extent such conversations and climate friendly behavior impact each other over time. Whereas most studies into climate change behavior change take an individualistic approach, I will take a social network approach as this is more suitable for collective problems such as climate change.

    Regional validity of survey questions on attitudes towards homosexuality in Europe: combining web probing with small area estimation
    dr. K.M. Meitinger (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    "Previous research revealed a puzzling finding in the measurement of attitudes towards homosexuality: In countries with extensive discrimination towards homosexuals, respondents were not aware of discrimination. In contrast, respondents in more tolerant countries report more frequently discrimination. Respondents across and within countries potentially interpret the questions differently and survey measures are potentially misleading.

    This project will combine web probing with small area estimation which will help to solve the puzzle of regional variations in attitudes and interpretations. The results will provide guidance to policy makers to interpret survey findings correctly but also give crucial input on how to improve measures."

    Psychosocial predictors of long COVID symptom clusters
    dr. G. Mertens (M), Tilburg University

    Long COVID is a common syndrome of persistent symptoms observed after recovering from COVID-19. However, it is currently unknown whether there may be several subtypes of long COVID. Furthermore, different clusters of symptoms may be predicted by different psychosocial, medical, and sociodemographic factors, such as anxiety symptoms, initial infection severity, or gender. To investigate these questions, we will make use of advanced dimension reduction techniques (i.e., network analyses) and prediction analyses to identify the different clusters of long COVID and its predictors. This project will help to characterize the variability in the expression of long COVID.

    Through the revolving door? An analysis of post-parliamentary careers in the Netherlands
    dr. T.A. Mickler (M), Universiteit Leiden

    After the end of their parliamentary mandate, some Members of Parliament (MPs) directly transition into attractive positions in sectors in which they were previously involved as policymakers. This creates the perception that MPs use their time in parliament to advance their own career opportunities. But is this perception justified? Using a large-scale quantitative analysis of Dutch MPs, this project provides insight into the relationship between the political experience and network that MPs built up during public service and the chances of obtaining particular post-parliamentary positions. The results provide empirical evidence regarding the public debate on parliaments as 'career stepping stones'.

    Uncharted territory: The human TRN
    dr. M.M.L. Moerel (V), Maastricht University

    Our senses pick up information about the outside world, which is then analysed by the brain. In this process, a small brain structure called the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) acts as gatekeeper. The TRN filters incoming sensory information, preventing information overload. In spite of its hypothesized crucial role, the TRN remains virtually unexplored in the human brain because regular non-invasive methods for exploring the human brain are limited in resolution. Here I will use state-of-the-art MRI scanners with a very strong magnetic field, yielding unprecedented spatial resolution. This will allow me to characterize the human TRN with high spatial detail.

    Waking Up to a New Reality. Applying Virtual Reality Technology to Understand the Contextual Dependency of Choice Behaviour to Increase the Societal Impact of Behavioural Interventions.
    dr. S. Mollen (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    In recent years we have been faced with many challenges worldwide, a COVID-19 pandemic, global warming, and a global obesity pandemic, to name a few. The solution to many of these problems lies in behaviour change. In the current project Virtual Reality is used to study how quickly changing contexts influence why we make certain decisions. For instance, why we suddenly choose a cheese stick over a bitterbal (small beef croquette) at the office Christmas party when our vegetarian colleague joins the conversation. Information from this project can be used to create more effective behavioural interventions tailored to the context.

    The emerging social self in infancy
    dr. M. Nikolic (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    The development of the social self— conceiving of oneself as a social being—is essential for human development as it allows us to act and interact in the social world. Considering its centrality to social life, this project aims at establishing a novel approach to capturing the emerging social self using recent theoretical insights, a new paradigm, and state-of-the-art methodology. Specifically, it examines whether infants show physiological, neural, and behavioural signs of the sense of social self while being exposed to others’ attention. This knowledge has potential to shift the perspective on human development and inspire research in other disciplines.

    The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, and Work Orientations
    dr. M.V. Nikolova (V), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    Recent trends, such as the "Great Resignation" (i.e., mass job quitting) and" Quiet Quitting" (i.e., putting minimum required effort at work), triggered heated social debates and media attention. But what worker motivations underpin these trends? This project focuses on differences in people's main motivation for working as a possible explanation. Some people view work as a job that brings a paycheck, others see it as a career and a way to get ahead in life, and still others as a calling or a life purpose. This project studies how these differences determine people's decisions related to job quitting and effort.

    Measuring the micro-processes of legal socialization during interactions between teachers and students
    dr. A.E. Nivette (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    Teachers are the first authority figures that youth encounter outside of their home environment. The way teachers and youth interact with each other informs youths’ attitudes about authorities within and outside the school. Through these interactions, youth develop their attitudes about rules and legal authorities such as the police. The details of how this learning occurs are not yet well understood. This project observes youth and their teachers discuss a rule-breaking situation and develops a coding system to identify common strategies that can lead to acceptance and compliance with rules among youth.

    Corporate risk-taking and employee health
    dr. S. Obernberger (M), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    With sick leave days at all-time highs and labor supply at all-time lows, employee health has come to the forefront of the political agenda. 50% of sick leave days are work-related, the largest share of which stems from stress-related diseases. This research project explores the two-way relationship between the firm’s exposure to risk and the health of its employees. First, the project will examine the effect of financial and business risk on the (mental) health of employees. Second, the project will examine how firms adjust their willingness to take risks when their workforce is in poor health.

    Issue Competition at the Local Level
    dr. S.P. Otjes (M), Universiteit Leiden

    The Dutch government recently decentralized tasks to municipalities. This is based on the assumption that municipal politics is responsive to societal problems, such as long-term unemployment. Yet this has not been studied. My central question is: to what extent and when do political parties at the local level respond to municipal societal issues? I study this in all Dutch municipalities between 2014 and 2022. Firstly, I examine the relationship between societal issues and party priorities in local party manifestos. Secondly, I examine the relationship between these party priorities and the behaviour of these parties in municipal councils.

    The Dark Sides of Personality and Willingness to Lead
    dr. Z.E. Ozturk Dormans (V), Tilburg University

    Power-hungry, manipulative, narcissistic leaders can have a major negative impact on the performance and well-being of individuals, organizations, even countries, that they lead. This project investigates how the dark sides of someone’s personality-measured as a combination of psychopathy, manipulativeness, and narcissism-affect their willingness to take on leadership positions. The findings of this project can help societies design institutions that encourage those who are better suited to lead to volunteer to take on leadership.

    Towards an understanding of differences in online hate speech perceptions of young adult social media users
    dr. S.J.R. Pabian (V), Tilburg University

    On social media, users are exposed to online hate speech, which is a type of speech that attacks a person or a group based on, for instance, race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Not every user recognizes this type of speech, evaluates it as severe, and/or feels the need to intervene, which can lead to damaging consequences for those attacked. The project aims to understand perceptions of young adult social media users by looking at characteristics of online hate speech messages and personal and group-based user characteristics. Theoretical and practical implications for developing interventions to change perceptions will be formulated.

    Stress and popularity status as important pathways in understanding adolescents’ problematic risk behavior
    dr. M. Peeters (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    Being accepted and receiving social status is important for adolescents. Risk behaviors like alcohol-, smoking- and cannabis use are often affected by the extent to which these behaviors increase popularity status. The hierarchy within a classroom (popularity, acceptance, rejection) may trigger stressful situations in which adolescents feel the need to defend or increase their status. These stressful situations may dysregulate optimal decision making in relation to engagement in risk behaviors. This project seeks to understand problematic risk behaviors as a consequence of popularity status and associated stress responses.

    Changing Work Climate – The Implications of Heat for Occupational Choice
    dr. N. Pestel (M), Maastricht University

    Climate change is increasing the frequency of heat episodes. Exposure to heat deteriorates working conditions especially in occupations that are associated with outdoor work and/or physically demanding tasks. This project studies the implications of exposure to heat for occupational choice among current and future generations of workers. In the context of the Netherlands, this project will empirically test whether fewer workers decide to work in outdoor-exposed and physically strenuous jobs after experiencing heat episodes. The analysis will be based on rich microdata on employment histories and educational enrolment combined with high-frequency geo-coded temperature data.

    Growing up in multilectal and multilingual Netherlands: The acquisition of sound variation by primary school children
    dr. A.C.H. Pinget (V), Universiteit Utrecht

    In their first years of life, infants acquire language by narrowing down their attention to the characteristics of their own language variety (i.e., the one produced by their caregivers). Only during adolescence, they start mastering language variation like adults. This project aims to investigate the period between these developmental phases by measuring the pronunciation of sounds in the speech of 4- to 8 years old and by testing how these children decide which pronunciation fits best in which context. The results will show the evolution in children’s acquisition of sound variation and its social meaning.

    On healing and self-work: examining the effects of the ceremonial use of psychedelics in the Netherlands on behaviour and wellbeing
    dr. I.A. Pop (V), Tilburg University

    The use of plant medicine ceremonies where participants ingest psychedelics has expanded in NL over the last years. Given the legal status of psychedelics, the immediate questions are: why do participants engage in a practice that exposes them to illegal substances and with what consequences? Using an innovative mixed-method approach combining in-depth interviews and experience sampling methods using a smartphone app, this project evaluates the effects of ceremonial use of psychedelics on behaviour and wellbeing of first time psychedelic users. This project will give fundament to a new line of research relevant for social sciences and public-health alike.

    FragmEndoscopy: An Innovative Way to Discover Hidden Heritage inside Early Modern Book Bindings
    dr. M.H. Porck (M), Universiteit Leiden

    A wealth of historical heritage is hidden in early modern book bindings, as pieces of parchment from medieval manuscripts were often reused to reinforce the binding mechanism. There is one problem, however: this important material is inaccessible without damaging the early modern book or using time-consuming and expensive scanning techniques. This project experiments with an innovative, fast and affordable solution to this problem. It exploits the natural mechanics of the early modern book through a technology also used by doctors, plumbers and car mechanics: endoscopy. Hidden information can then be revealed without damaging the book.

    Need for speed: improving the institutional structure of international governmental organisations for rapid crisis responses
    dr. Y. Reykers (M), Maastricht University

    International governmental organisations (IGOs), such as the European Union (EU), United Nations and World Health Organization, are commonly seen as key actors in providing coordinated responses to crises with global dimensions. However, many IGOs have also been criticised for being too slow in their crisis responses. This is problematic, as speed matters for avoiding that crises escalate or cost lives. By studying the EU institutional architecture in the fields of health and security, this pilot project seeks to generate a set of hypotheses about how the institutional structure of IGOs can determine their crisis response time.

    Impacts of sharing research findings with study participants: Evidence from a field experiment
    dr. M. Rieger (M), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    I analyse impacts of sharing research findings with study participants. Although research dissemination traditionally focuses on other academics, policymakers, and the public, social scientists increasingly recognize the obligation of sharing results with research participants. When research findings are shared, impacts are typically assessed qualitatively rather than quantitatively. In the context of a study on health beliefs/knowledge among parents and children, I examine whether sharing general findings (treatment 1) or personalized findings (treatment 2) improve health beliefs/knowledge, study participation/quality, and research perceptions compared to no sharing (control 1) and sharing research findings from the wider literature (control 2).

    Affording a home: The mental health effects of increasing housing prices
    dr. C.J. Riumallo Herl (M), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Housing prices increased since the Great Depression and reached record heights in recent years. Despite the importance of this phenomenon, there are no studies that evaluate the consequences of the housing affordability crisis on mental health at a population level. This project aims to fill this gap, by estimating the effect of reduced affordability on mental health using Dutch administrative records and exploring heterogeneity across age groups, socioeconomic status, and ownership status. This study will contribute to current policy making by identifying potential mechanisms that can help individuals cope with the mental health consequences of increasing housing costs.

    Language assessment during Deep Brain Stimulation surgery
    dr. A. Rofes (M), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

    We will validate a method to score two narrative stories (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood) in people with Parkinson’s disease and Essential Tremor, while they undergo Deep Brain Stimulation surgery. We will apply this method to understand what language capacities (i.e., lexical-semantics and morpho-syntax) are impaired, and whether the scores provided by our new method can predict language impairments three months after surgery. Our research is new because most published work has been on speech outcomes (i.e., acoustics, articulation) after DBS surgery. Therefore, we will start a new research line that applies current neurolinguistic knowledge during surgery in this population.

    GREEN KIDS. Green early childhood centers and Kids’ experiences: Co-designing a sustainability pedagogy.
    dr. S.D.M. van Schaik (V), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    How do we raise today’s toddlers for a green tomorrow? While growing up in a world with increasing need for sustainability, a sustainability pedagogy for the early years is missing. How can Early Childhood Education (ECE) support toddlers to care for nature and sustainability? By first) asking green ECE professionals and observing toddlers in these centers and second) co-designing a pedagogy with regular ECE professionals, this project aims to study and share sustainability knowledge and tools with ECE teachers. After all, all toddlers are entitled to nature-rich early childhood experiences that support them in their development and care for life.

    The Spread and Economic Consequences of (In)Tolerance: Lessons from WWII and Suriname’s Independence
    dr. D. Schindler (M), Tilburg University

    Why does intolerance towards other ethnicities persist over long periods of time? Apart from the detrimental effects on the exposed individuals, what effect does it have on the larger economy? And how can tolerance spread throughout society and mitigate racial prejudice? This project uses state-of-the-art causal identification methods to harness historical data to answer these questions. The results will help us better understand how we can successfully abate prejudice and foster tolerance across European societies that are currently subject to substantial migration flows.

    It takes two to tango: The two mechanisms by which exposure to a novel environment can promote memory
    dr. J. Schomaker (V), Universiteit Leiden

    When visiting a new place, it is relevant to learn about that environment to be able to avoid danger and seek out reward during a future visit. Work in animals has shown that exposure to novel environments can promote memory and suggests that two distinct neurotransmitter systems underlie these effects: The dopaminergic and the noradrenergic system. Although studies have shown similar effects of novelty on human memory, the neurobiological mechanisms have not yet been investigated humans. Therefore, the current project aims to pinpoint the role of both dopamine and noradrenaline in the beneficial effects of novelty on memory in humans.

    The Evolution of Stress
    dr. S.A. Schrader (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Archaeologists can test ancient hair for cortisol, a stress hormone, but previous research has been limited. The Evolution of Stress project will build on this by (1) refining current detection methods, (2) expanding the tissues analysed, and (3) assessing variation in stress over thousands of years. Through an interdisciplinary and collaborative programme, we will better understand how stress changed from an early agropastoral population to an early modern industrialized society. Stress and overwork are massive problems today, so a better understanding of the deep history of stress and how it has changed through time is of significant societal relevance.

    The anxious multilingual brain: Negative emotions and resilience in transnational migration
    dr. Y.S. Sevinc (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    What happens in the multilingual brain when multilinguals speak the language(s) they feel anxious about? What bodily symptoms accompany this sense of anxiety? How do negative emotions such as anxiety affect multilinguals’ language use and well-being? How do immigrant multilinguals cope with their negative emotions and build emotional resilience? Do specific cues, lived experiences or environmental contexts trigger their negative emotions? In addressing these questions, this project aims to provide new theoretical and methodological insights for exploring the link between linguistic, social, emotional, and psychophysiological processes of multilingual and immigrant experiences.

    State Ownership for Sustainability? Exploring Promise, Assessing Risks
    dr. J. Sluijs (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    EU policymakers increasingly leverage state ownership of companies to accelerate meeting sustainability objectives. This project assesses how the EU legal framework can optimize the potential of state ownership in sustainability policy, while mitigating adverse effects on competition, rule of law and geopolitics. This research critically examines a promising idea, with a potentially ground-breaking impact on the success of sustainability efforts in the EU and beyond. However, the complex nature of both sustainability goals and the EU legal framework require scoping into a coherent research agenda, and a multidisciplinary consortium to execute this agenda.

    Cash or card? Payment choice and consumption
    dr. E. Smajlbegovic (M), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

    Digital payments are on the rise, while cash usage has been declining around the world. This shift in payment choice has sparked an important debate among academics and policymakers: Does a cashless society have adverse effects on households, firms, and the economy overall? Do card payments lead to overspending? This project studies whether payment type has a causal effect on consumption spending. The empirical tests rely on explosive attacks on 1,863 automated teller machines (ATMs), which introduce a plausibly exogenous change in cash availability for affected households. The findings have important societal implications for the future of money.

    Tracking motor development, where and when it happens
    dr. ir. J.C. Stapel (V), Maastricht University

    Novel computer vision algorithms bear great promise for measuring movements with high spatial detail and very precise timing in-the-wild. This is unprecedented as it may allow researchers to track what was thus far impossible to track: human motor development. Infants acquire a vast array of fundamental motor skills within their first years of life. This development happens at home, whereas current-day tools for measuring motor development are lab-bound. I will put this novel methodology to a set of stringent tests to uncover the viability of measuring infants’ motor skills at home, exactly where and when they develop.

    Smart Care: Artist Intent and Artist Interviews
    dr. S. Stigter (V), Universiteit van Amsterdam

    Conducting interviews with artists, curators and other stakeholders is essential in conservation research to understand unconventional contemporary works of art. However, artist intent is not unambiguous and may evolve over time and be shaped or changed in the dialogue with artists. What if the artist is no longer around; could artificial intelligence then take over the artist’s voice? This project investigates this wicked question to support decision-making around reinstallation and restoration of complex artworks in a ground-breaking approach nurturing smart care for a sustainable future of complex artworks.

    “You don’t know what it’s like!” Exploring the epistemic role of Experts-by-Experience in mental health care
    dr. D.W. Strijbos (M), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

    Expertise-by-Experience is increasingly influential in (Dutch) mental health care. However, the precise contribution of Experts-by-Experience is unclear, due to an epistemological dilemma at the heart of the concept of experiential knowledge: either it is a distinctively new form of knowledge in being subject-dependent but then becomes non-generalizable, or it is generalizable but no longer subject-dependent. This project aims to (i) employ tools from philosophy to resolve or sidestep this dilemma by scrutinizing the concepts underlying it, and (ii) establish a network of researchers, clinicians and Experts-by-Experience to share the results of this project and fuel further research on this topic.

    Iran’s Secular Shift: A Survey Challenge to Measure Declining Religiosity in the Middle East
    dr. P. Tamimi Arab (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    Traditional surveying methods like telephone polling can lead to invalid results in authoritarian countries. This research on the politically sensitive topic of declining religiosity in Iran is conducted anonymously, making respondents feel safer to express their opinions. Data is gathered online by making the survey available through a multitude of digital channels and a VPN platform with national reach. Uncensored data on the Iranian people’s opinions help to better understand secularization beyond the West and how politically sensitive opinions can be measured in authoritarian countries.

    Mindless Mice: Multiple imputation without explicit model specification.
    dr. G. Vink (M), Universiteit Utrecht

    The increasing use of data driven analysis techniques in data science & AI requires a great deal of expert knowledge. When the data are incomplete, this knowledge must also include the exact specification of statistical imputation models to solve for the missingness. This project proposes mindless imputation, a data-driven automated technique for solving incomplete data problems that minimizes the need for user intervention. With mindless imputation, applied researchers can focus on the analysis, knowing that the used imputation technique allows for valid inferences and reliable predictions in the context of incomplete data.

    Picture this! Exploring the effects of clinicians’ helpful and harmful communication behaviours on patients’ brain activity and brain connectivity.
    dr. L.M. van Vliet (V), Universiteit Leiden

    Clinicians’ communication affects patients’ psychological (anxiety) and cognitive (information-recall) outcomes. It is unknown whether communication also influences neurobiological outcomes. This project aims to disentangle the neurobiological basis of communication. In the setting of advanced cancer, we explore how clinician’s helpful and harmful communication affect brain activity and brain connectivity. Healthy participants (n=15) watch videos of helpful, harmful, and neutral communication while lying in an MR scanner. The effect of the different communication on brain activity and brain connectivity, and self-reported evaluations is assessed. This study opens a new research paradigm, integrating the words of communication and neurobiology, building communication’s evidence-base.

    To Concede or to Control: the response of authoritarian regimes to nonviolent resistance movements
    dr. M. Weerdesteijn (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    Non-violent resistance movements have become less effective the past decades. While the influence of dissidents on the effectiveness of a non-violent resistance movement has been widely researched, how the regime responds – its strategies and decision-making processes – are understudied. Through a most-similar case study design, this research will analyse how the manner in which an authoritarian regime responds to a non-violent resistance campaign impacts its outcome. The response of the government of Belarus to the ultimately unsuccessful non-violent resistance campaign in 2020-2021 will be compared with the response of the government of Kyrgyzstan which conceded to protestors in 2005.

    Questions on social media as a window on our collective curiosity
    dr. M. Westera (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Online media affect not only what we believe to be true or false, but also which questions we entertain, what we are curious or uncertain about. Such questions may, in turn, increase our vulnerability to disinformation: people more readily believe a lie if it answers a question they already had. This project will use the millions of questions posted on social media as a window onto our collective curiosity, to investigate, among other things, whether a surge in disinformation is preceded by changes in our curiosity.

    Embodying decision-making: Do our movements influence cognitive decisions?
    dr. B.C.M. van Wijk (V), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    We believe the decisions we make result from careful thought processes. Yet our body is needed for turning these decisions into actions. Can it be that our motor system is also driving the decisions we make? The researchers will investigate to what extent the effort to move influences perceptual decision-making. In a series of behavioural experiments, they will systematically explore whether required muscle force, reaching distance, and handedness lead to a bias in selected choices. This approach may ultimately lead to a paradigm shift in cognitive psychology regarding the factors that contribute to decision-making behaviour in health and pathology.

    Does the human brain process angry voices automatically?
    dr. J. Witteman (M), Universiteit Leiden

    Only when a result is obtained repeatedly (is ‘replicable’) does it count as a discovery. Neurolinguistics uses measurement of brain activity (neuroimaging) to study language processing in the brain. Due to small sample size, replicability of neuroimaging might be limited, but currently there are no close replications. A prominent small study found that brain areas process angry voices even when unattended (‘automatically’), having implications for neurolinguistic theory and disorders such as autism. This project will replicate this study with a large sample size and perform a more stringent statistical test to find out if angry voices are indeed processed automatically.

    Prosecuting “The Mother of All Crimes” in Domestic Courts: A Legal-Empirical Assessment of the Crime of Aggression under Customary International Law
    dr. L.D. Yanev (M), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

    From the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the flaring tensions between China and Taiwan, recent events have breathed new life into a legal concept that had remained dormant since the World War II-era Nazi trials: the crime of aggression. A central question that arises is whether this crime is amenable to the universal jurisdiction of domestic courts under customary international law. This project combines empirical, historical and legal-dogmatic research to critically evaluate whether international law provides a legal basis for states to assert universal jurisdiction over the crime of aggression and prosecute it in their national courts.

    4OpenScience: A Novel and Innovative Framework to Evaluate the Positive and Negative Effects of Dutch Universities’ Open Science Programs
    dr. A.M.G. Zuiderwijk - van Eijk (V), Technische Universiteit Delft

    The scientific literature barely addresses the evaluation of universities’ Open Science programs. 4OpenScience develops and tests an innovative evaluation framework enabling the identification of the positive and negative effects of Open Science Programs of Dutch universities. It realizes a scientific breakthrough by both developing a completely novel standard for universities’ Open Science program evaluations and establishing an essential, new research direction. Focusing on Open Science program elements with the most positive effects may lead to increased openness in science, potentially contributing to transparency, rigor, and the accumulation of knowledge. Finally, these improvements can advance scientific knowledge in all research disciplines.

Open Competition SSH - M

  • Granted projects Round 2022

    Costs of Democracy
    Dr. W.J. Berenschot (KITLV),

    Expensive elections campaigns are a threat to democracies around the world, because they generate corruption and political inequality. Yet, due to methodological obstacles and a western bias in the current literature, we do not really know what makes election campaigns expensive. Employing a new methodology, this project studies the campaign expenditures of a thousand politicians from across India and Indonesia to explain why campaign expenditures vary. In doing so, this project aims to help reduce the role of money in elections to healthier levels.

    A data-driven historico-philosophical investigation into axiomatic and experimental science
    Prof. dr. A. Betti (UvA),

    Axiomatic science, such as logic or mathematics, is viewed by many historians and philosophers as being completely different from experimental science. On the basis of a philosophical, data-driven and computational analysis of conceptions of science adopted by Early Modern British thinkers, we demonstrate, on the contrary, that in this crucial period experimental science was often conceptualized as also being axiomatic in nature. This shows that the commonly assumed incompatibility between experimental and axiomatic science is mistaken. A team of philosophers and programmers will apply and further develop novel data-driven and computational methods and techniques in collaboration with libraries and industry.

    Uncovering Biased Language Use: Implicit Communication of Stereotypes in Natural Language
    Dr. C.J. Beukeboom (VU),

    Daily language use contains many (implicit) expressions about social categories, like minority, age, and gender groups. These expressions construct and maintain stereotypes, and, often unknowingly, feed prejudice and discrimination. In this project we create a thorough understanding and awareness of stereotype communication, by studying when and how stereotypes are reflected in, and inferred from, spontaneously produced natural language. In addition, we develop a software toolset to automatically detect stereotypes and prejudices in texts. This toolset can uncover implicit biases in a variety of real-life contexts and thereby facilitates further (applied) research, content monitoring, correction, prevention and education about stereotyping.

    Homicide’s ripple-effect; assessing the familial ramifications of homicide offending and bereavement
    Prof. dr. mr. C.C.J.H. Bijleveld (NSCR),

    Combining national statistical and criminological data, the long- and short-term consequences of homicide are analyzed for various family members of the victim, and family members of the perpetrator. This provides new scientific insights for a small, very vulnerable group of citizens, information that is essential to tailor support and restorative interventions.

    Tales from the Dutch Drug Closet
    Prof. dr. G. Blok (OU),

    What do experiential stories of drug users reveal about the interconnectedness of the rise of drug cultures, and individualisation? We investigate the meanings of intoxication for (former) drug users. Collecting their stories, we aim to better understand the role that drug use has come to play during the past 50 years. The illegal status of cocaine, heroin and psychedelics make experience-based stories surrounded by stigma and taboo. This complicates both the historical analysis of, and public debate about, drug use and policy, in the Netherlands and beyond: this project serves as the beginning of internationalisation of digital storytelling around intoxication.

    Why is walking so difficult for people living with Parkinson's disease and why do cues help?
    Dr. T.W. Boonstra (UM),

    People living with Parkinson's disease often have problems walking. Using external cues, such as an acoustic rhythm or stripes on the ground, helps, but why? In this project, an existing theoretical framework – that of predictive coding – is taken as a unique starting point to target brain and body signals to obtain a better understanding of walking problems in Parkinson's and to optimise cues, with the premise to assist their walking more effectively.

    Diversity in leadership positions and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in Dutch firms
    Dr. A.L. Boring (EUR),

    Firms increasingly implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies to improve diversity in leadership positions. This is despite a lack of solid evidence on their effectiveness. We propose to provide the first comprehensive study of DEI policies in the Netherlands. First, we will document potential links between diversity in leadership and existence (or not) of DEI policies across firms. Second, we will investigate both employees' and firms' attitudes towards DEI policies using survey experiments. Third, we will use these findings to inform the design of optimal DEI policies and further test their effectiveness by conducting field experiments within organizations.

    Moral compass: how moral language of Dutch politicians and journalists guides citizens
    Dr. L. Bos (UvA),

    Political elites use moral language to shift public debates and to persuade and mobilize voters. Despite the significant consequences of morality, little is known about how Dutch politicians use moral language, how journalists amplify this use of moral language, and how citizens’ moral judgment is shaped by public moral discourse. This project studies (1) the dynamics of moral rhetoric by Dutch political elites and journalists, and investigates (2) the impact of these moral messages on citizens. To remedy the negative consequences of moral messaging, we (3) test several interventions.

    A gut feeling: the neuroscience of gut microbiota’s influence on risk and time preferences
    Prof. dr. E.C. Brüggen (UM),

    Recently, our group demonstrated that gut microbiota affect economic choices. Yet, it is still unclear how and to which extent the gut and the brain communicate. This multidisciplinary research uses neuroscientific methods such as brain stimulation, neuroimaging, and probiotics, to investigate the role of the gut-brain-axis in risk and intertemporal choices.

    Community-based forestry in Ethiopia
    Prof. dr. ir. E.H. Bulte (WUR),

    In many low-income countries, the degradation of natural forests continues at an alarming rate. This project explores how delegating forest user rights to local communities affects the livelihoods of rural households as well as the sustainability of forest management. The project is based on a large-scale randomized controlled trial in Ethiopia.

    Who’s next? The role of speech melody in the turn-taking system of Dutch
    Dr. J. Caspers (LEI),

    In natural conversation people take turns at talk with on average very short intermediate pauses. Thus interlocutors have to plan ahead what they want to say and when they can take the next turn. The role of speech melody in this process is a puzzle. E.g., question intonation is clearly audible on utterance final syllables, which seems too late for turn-planning by the current listener. In the proposed research, corpus analysis and manipulated dialogue will be used to investigate if and how utterance final speech melody is used in the turn-taking system of Dutch.

    Towards an Animal Turn in Sociolinguistics. Understanding the dairy cow’s interaction with humans and with each other
    Prof. dr. L.M.E.A. Cornips (Meertens Inst),

    The project will examine dairy cows. Cows have a longstanding bond with humans, yet compared with companion animals, we know far less about their social behaviour. The project aims at applying sociolinguistic methods targeting a multimodal and material analysis of the sounds, gaze, movements, facial expressions, touch, space, and sensorial capacities of dairy cows. As a result, the project will provide proof of principle for an animal turn in sociolinguistics, which furthers our understanding of how cows use their voices and bodies to understand and relate to each other and to humans.

    Reading China Better
    Dr. R.J.E.H. Creemers (LEI),

    Researching contemporary China has become increasingly difficult recently, due to covid-related travel restrictions as well as to political pressures inside China. At a time where China knowledge is more relevant than ever, this project aims to develop new methodologies to better use documentary sources that have remained underutilized in China scholarship and policy analysis thus far. It will explore how big data-enabled tools enable analysts to access and process official and semi-official sources at scale, and how they facilitate novel forms of trend monitoring. It also intends to develop new intellectual frameworks for understanding the functioning of the Chinese Party-state.

    Adolescence as the root of unequal political participation and ambition between boys and girls
    Prof. dr. G.T.M. ten Dam (UvA),

    Women are systematically underrepresented in political office, political activism, and even in the voting booth. This research project investigates to what extent the roots of this inequality lie in the development of political ambitions and participatory intent during adolescence. The focus is on the interaction between gender and gender norms of adolescents (12-18 years old) and their (school) environment. The project employs unique panel survey data (ADKS) to explain the unequal development of political ambition and participatory intent; qualitative interviews to understand inequality in political ambition and participatory intent; and experiments to test which means might help reduce these inequalities.

    Staging Nobility in Urban Space. The Nassau Dynasty in the Low Countries (1400-1570)
    Dr. M.J.M. Damen (UvA),

    In 1403, the Nassau dynasty acquired the town of Breda and other lordships in the Low Countries. The rise of this high-ranking noble family had important consequences for this highly urbanized area. This project demonstrates how the Nassaus used urban space to legitimate their privileged position and to represent their noble lineage and lifestyle. Moreover, it uncovers how, in their turn, the towns took advantage of the dynasty’s princely, noble and religious networks in the fifteenth and sixteenth century.

    SEM 2.0: Towards personalized multi-disciplinary treatment plans
    Dr. K. van Deun (UvT),

    Latent variable models are a crucial research tool in the social and behavioural sciences. However, they cannot handle the complexity that comes with contemporary research paradigms: besides intensive collections of data representing different disciplinary views (e.g., psychological, clinical, biological) a person-centric approach is taken to account for the large heterogeneity between subjects, e.g., with the aim of developing personalized multi-disciplinary treatment plans. The current project develops the next generation of latent variable models to address this need.

    The Poetics of Olfaction in Early Modernity (POEM)
    Dr. J.F. van Dijkhuizen (LEI),

    What does it mean to perceive smell? This question fascinated poets and playwrights of the early modern period (ca. 1500–1700). Our project examines how they put the language of smell perception to literary use. For example, they used the elusive nature of smell to convey the ineffable (such as communion with the divine), and to explore how humans interact with their natural environment. We also examine how smell can help promote the reading and teaching of literature now. Together with teachers, poets, spoken word artists, novelists and scent designers, we will design a nose-wise lesson programme for secondary schools.

    Distracted and disaffected. How daily distractions influence our dietary consumption habits and glucose dynamics
    Dr. L.F. van Dillen (LEI),

    We have a lot on our minds and often eat and drink behind the television, the wheel, or the computer. At the same time, our eating habits have become more unhealthy, and overweight and diabetes are increasing in the population. This project will test the relationship between these observations, by examining how distraction affects our eating and drinking habits and metabolic glucose dynamics.

    My robot colleague will be with you in a moment – Public service by teams of robots and humans
    Prof. dr. J. van Doorn (RUG),

    With an ageing population and an alarming shortage of health care personnel, the rising demand for health care is possibly one of the most urgent challenges of our time. Socially engaging service robots can help solve these personnel shortages, but cannot (yet) fully replace human service employees. They also encounter resistance from the side of both the human client and co-worker. In this interdisciplinary project, researchers will investigate how robots and human employees should work together to safeguard service satisfaction and client well-being, as well as job satisfaction and work performance of the human employee.

    Protecting people and planet through supply chain legislation?
    Dr. L.W. Fransen (UvA),

    Governments of an increasing number of countries are currently developing legislation that holds firms accountable for labor, environmental and human rights conditions in their supply chains. This research analyzes through big data the relationships between firms in supply chains to evaluate the extent to which firms required to comply with such laws are able to make the expected improvement in their supply chains. In addition, the project examines the effect of existing laws on supply chains: do firms commit to undo labor, environmental or human rights abuses at supplying producers, or do they distance themselves from these producers?

    And the winner is…!? The battle for the most impactful framing of election results between media and politics in multi-party systems
    Dr. K. Gattermann (UvA),

    Election nights are exciting moments for politicians, journalists, and voters, but researchers still know little about what really happens on election night. Winning and losing in countries with multiple parties is rarely clear-cut. Who is actually considered a winner and who are the losers? The purpose of this project is to understand how and why politicians and journalists try to frame election results in a certain way in the immediate aftermath of democratic elections. It will also examine the extent to which such framing has effects on voter perceptions of winners and losers alongside political and media cynicism.

    Servus. The reception of Roman law outside Europe
    Dr. J. Giltaij (UvA),

    There were many legal texts in Roman Antiquity concerning slaves and slavery. Roman law has an important later history.  From the Middle Ages onwards, slavery was outlawed on the European continent. But the Roman legal texts on slaves and slavery were applied still outside of Europe, this time to the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade. Moreover, the texts were applied far beyond, to all kinds of people. This projects investigates how this happened exactly.

    The revolting body: Self-disgust as a key factor in anorexia nervosa
    Dr. K.A. Glashouwer (RUG),

    How do patients with anorexia nervosa succeed in persisting with their rigorous avoidance of food? Disgust towards their own body could help explain extreme food restriction. This research therefore investigates self-disgust with a new virtual reality application and sets out to prove whether the treatment of self-disgust helps individuals with anorexia to eat more.

    Understanding resilience of single parents: Development of the Multi-Domain Resilience model
    Dr. A.D. de Haan (EUR)

    Single parents nowadays fulfill adult roles in multiple life domains simultaneously: they are parent, professional, friend, and/or family member. Moreover, many single parents are faced with difficult circumstances, such as divorce, poverty, and stigmatization. Nevertheless, many single parents function well: they are resilient. To understand how and why single parents are resilient, this project will develop the Multi-Domain Resilience model in co-creation with parents. The project employs different methods: in-depth interviews, conventional questionnaires, daily diary measures. Knowledge obtained from this project can be used to advise policy makers and professionals how they can understand and support resilience in single parents.

    Cinematic Beauty: Exploring the Experience of a Major Aesthetic Phenomenon
    Dr. J.H. Hanich (RUG),

    Cinematic beauty is the pleasurable affective response that audiences experience when they consider a film beautiful. Since the beginning of cinema, movie-goers have encountered beauty in film’s many forms and genres, ranging from fiction films and animation to documentaries and avant-garde experiments. But astonishingly, scholars of film have never systematically studied cinematic beauty—a neglect all the more striking as the experience of cinematic beauty may have societal, political and existential functions while encouraging well-being and pro-sociality. This project will investigate how cinematic beauty feels and what makes the experience valuable, both to individuals and society.

    Digital Laborers: Crafting Policy with Behind-the-Scenes Microworkers
    Prof. dr. C.L. ter Hoeven (EUR),

    The functioning of artificial intelligence often requires human labor, called microwork. In Europe, there are millions of people doing this work at home through online platforms. This work is presented online in small tasks, such as coding data and labelling images. Right now, microwork is poorly paid and unregulated. The European Commission has made a proposal to regulate online platform work. To make the proposed regulations as effective as possible, this research examines the concerns and needs of microworkers themselves and how these can be translated into effective policies, in which the working conditions of microworkers are of primary concern.

    Everyday Geographies of Being and Becoming Disabled
    Dr. B. van Hoven (RUG),

    The city potentially has a lot to offer as a place where people feel at home and gain experience with various aspects of citizenship. Accessibility, encounter and mobilities play an important role in this. However, disabled people are often effectively excluded and marginalised from urban and public spaces. Through community-based participatory research and co-creation with social partners, the project addresses both a societal question and contributes to scientific discussion that addresses the complexities surrounding the daily lives of disabled people in a normative society in urban spaces.

    Recovering from the daily demands of work
    Prof. dr. U.R. Hülsheger (UM),

    When working, people are exerting effort and are exposed to demands that may induce stress. Recovering from these demands after work is therefore important to prevent stress reactions from building up and from affecting their health and well-being. This research investigates what kind of after-work activities are optimally suited to recover from the demands of work. In doing so, the project considers that the optimal recovery activity likely depends on the person and the work they perform. Therefore, a personalized and adaptive intervention approach is developed.

    The end of babies? A mixed-methods study of narratives about the future, societal pessimism, and voluntary childlessness among Dutch adults
    Dr. K.O. Ivanova (UvT),

    The proportion of adults who plan not to have children is undeniably increasing. This project is grounded in the assertion that understanding childfree motivations of contemporary adults requires that we consider how individuals reason about and experience ‘societal pessimism’ - the feeling that things are not quite right in the world - clearly distinguishing it from concerns about own future prospects. The goals of the project will be achieved using both panel survey data and in-depth interviews with Dutch adults.

    An Analysis of the Pluralism of Legal Sources in the Early Modern Legal Practice of the Court of Friesland
    Prof. dr. mr. H. de Jong (VU),

    Based on this proposal, the civil court records from 1716-1730, kept in the archives of the Court of Friesland, will be researched. This period was characterized by pluralism of legal sources. The aim is to understand the use of sources in legal practice. In particular, the effect is studied of the revision of the Landsordonnantie in 1723. The corpus of civil court records is digitized and made (re)searchable by Handwritten Text Recognition developed by Transkribus. Text annotation platforms are used to reveal the multiplicity of legal sources (patterns). Analysis of these patterns will demonstrate the status of these legal sources.

    Integrating History in Dutch Public Policy: Perceptions, Practices and Interventions
    Dr. H.G.J. Kaal (RU),

    Policy makers value history. They do not, however, systematically apply historical insights and skills in policy practice. This project studies why this is the case. Research will be aimed at three different Dutch policy contexts: the formulation of government policy, policy in a context of crisis, and co-legislation by the House of Representatives. The project results in the development of interventions that help to structurally embed history in public policy practice.

    Integration Activities for Improving Refugees’ Position in the Labor Market
    Dr. A.M. Kanas (EUR),

    To address refugees’ challenges in the labor market, policymakers have established various integration activities, ranging from language courses to verifying foreign credentials and skills and on-the-job training measures. However, refugees’ access to some integration programs may be constrained by caseworkers’ discretion, or refugees’ participation may not be valued by employers. This project studies inequality in access to integration activities and variation in employers’ response to refugees’ participation in these activities. By distinguishing between different types of employees and employers and focusing on caseworkers’ discretion in allocation decisions, it will reveal which integration interventions work, for whom, and why.

    Migration and invisible borders in Latin American cities
    Dr. ir. C.J. Klaufus (UvA),

    Migration between Latin American countries is increasing. Migrants leave their motherlands to escape violence, poverty and ecological disasters. When they reach cities, they often go to self-built settlements which function as tiny villages according to specific, unspoken rules. This research centralizes migrants’ experiences of acceptance and exclusion when trying to settle in these places. In this way, the study will map out the alternative modes of governance in these neighbourhoods in Latin America, by investigating how social borders are put in place, and how they are being protected and challenged.

    BES for informative hypotheses: Aggregating evidence from conceptual replications
    Prof. dr. I.G. Klugkist (UU),

    Bayesian Evidence Synthesis (BES) is a method that aggregates levels of evidence from multiple studies. BES is highly flexible because it aggregates at the level of hypotheses instead of on the level of data or model parameters (as, for instance, in meta-analysis). It can therefore aggregate results of highly diverse studies  (e.g., with different design, statistical model, and/or variables) as, for instance, obtained from conceptual replication. BES is however still in its infancy. The proposed (methodological) investigations will mature BES towards a broadly applicable tool, that allows for empirical quantification of the generalizability of scientific theories.

    Who really make the rules on trade?
    Dr. T. Kohl (RUG),

    Globalization impacts our daily lives. The rules that determine the outcomes of globalization are contained in Free Trade Agreements. These trade deals are the result of a political decision-making process. However, this process itself is subject to invisible lobbies aiming to shape the rules and outcomes of globalization to their advantage. This project examines who these lobbyists are, which interests they represent, and how much money they spend on politicians. The results will shed light on how and the extent to which commercial and social interests determine the public decision-making process on globalization.

    Grass Roots Resilience, Security Governance, and Urbanism in Latin American Violent Cities
    Prof. dr. C.G. Koonings (UU),

    The aim of this research project is to understand strategies, practices, experiences and impact of various modalities of grass roots’ resilience against protracted or chronic urban violence and insecurity in Latin America. The main focus is on collective modes of resilience in and by communities within the so-called ‘urban margins’. However, these modes of resilience will be studied in connection to two other dimensions of urban resilience pertinent to communities in the urban margins: urban security governance, and urbanism, that is to say, socio-spatial and socio-material interventions in the urban assemblage.

    Individual differences in subjective experience: The key to understanding perception
    Dr. T.M. van Leeuwen (UvT),

    No one perceives the world in the same way: there are large individual differences in perception. In this project the researchers will discover the role of mental imagery abilities and sensory sensitivity in perception. They will compare people who have either high or low sensory sensitivity, and either detail-rich or limited imagery abilities.

    To avoid or not to avoid: Social support as a unique safety signal in pain-related avoidance learning
    Dr. A. Meulders (UM),

    People with chronic pain show excessive avoidance of movement and activity, hampering their daily functioning and leading to disability. Exposure treatments targeting fear of movement and activity are successful, but relapse often occurs and avoidance or safety signals during exposure are known to complicate treatment. We will test the idea that social support is a unique safety signal that can attenuate the development and spreading of pain-related avoidance behavior and can facilitate the extinction of pain-related fear and prevent the return of avoidance behavior after treatment.

    Cross-border interorganizational cooperation in crime control
    Prof. dr. J.M.P.H. Noortmann (UM),

    Cross-border crime is a structural problem for many European border regions. Combating for example drug-crimes and human trafficking that occurs across borders requires far-reaching Euregional cooperation between police forces, public prosecution services, and municipalities. The project investigates the complexity of cooperation between these public organizations in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine (EMR). Academics from law, political science, and organization studies and professionals from the distinctive public organizations work closely together. The research provides new evidence-based knowledge that will inform the scientific debates, policies, and practices of interorganizational cooperation in cross-border crime control.

    Moral Truth: Exploring the Concept of Practical Cognition in Kant’s Ethics
    Dr. T.R.V. Nys (UvA),

    Moral judgments seem to claim objective validity. To believe torture is permissible is a mistake. But how should we understand this error?

    Within Kantian ethics, this objectivity is currently seen as the result of a process of "construction": moral principles are rules of action to which we subscribe as rational beings. Moral knowledge, then, takes shape through a rational process.

    This research argues that Kant employed a more robust idea of moral knowledge through a close analogy between the practical and theoretical. Not only does this provide a more faithful Kant interpretation, but also a stronger foundation for moral knowledge.

    Cousin Kevin: On Bullying Motivations, Goals, and Affordances—and How we should Intervene
    Prof. dr. G.J. Overbeek (UvA),

    Most children bully not out of a lack of social skills, but because they instrumentally pursue dominance and peer group status. It follows that to effectively remediate bullying, we must change the peer group norm so that it signals the unacceptability and ineffectiveness of bullying. We will be the first to study this in a global IPD meta-analysis of 39.000+ youths participating in RCTs of anti-bullying programs, and a micro-trial in which we isolate prosocial peer norms and positive peer roles as putative effective elements of an anti-bullying approach.

    The Great Game of Pandemics: Sanitary Internationalism in the Middle East and North Africa, 1792-1942
    Dr. H.O. Ozavci (UU),

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, the inadequacy of health cooperation between the global north and south has had dire and lethal consequences for humanity. And yet we still have limited knowledge as to how we can establish effective and durable north-south cooperation systems without paving pathways to foreign domination and nationalist backlashes. To address this pressing problem, the project will turn to the guidance of the past. It will write a new history of the first and longest-lasting institutions of global health cooperation: the international sanitary councils in the Middle East and North Africa.

    Restricting raw material exports -- bad for the world, good at home?
    Prof. dr. S. Poelhekke (VU),

    Industrial raw materials such as copper, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements are critical inputs in countless production processes, including renewable energy, lithium batteries, and other inputs supporting the green transition. Many developing countries simply export raw materials while most value added is generated in advanced economies, which lowers global consumer prices but does little to reduce poverty and global inequality. Many countries therefore started to voluntarily restrict raw material exports, often to promote local processing industries. Does that put them on a path to prosperity, and what are the implications for trade, global value chains, and the energy transition?

    The Global Business of Slave Trade – Patterns, Actors and Gains in the Early Modern Dutch and Iberian Slave Trade in Asia
    Dr. F.I. Ribeiro da Silva (Intern Inst of Soc History),

    This project shifts the (global) debates on slavery by reconstructing the ‘Asian’ slave trades, focusing on its actors, gains and consequences. It focuses on three pivotal but understudied areas, namely South and Eastern Africa, South China Sea and the Indonesian Archipelago. And it employs new digital research methods for digitized sources from Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and local Asian archives to transform our understanding of the dynamics and impact of slave trade outside the Atlantic.

    Stressed eyewitnesses: good or bad for memory?
    Dr. M.S. Sauerland (UM),

    Police rely on eyewitnesses for investigating crimes. Because eyewitnesses often experience stress, it is important to understand how stress during a crime affects memory. While eyewitness memory researchers report memory impairing effects of stress, fundamental memory researchers report the opposite: stress enhances memory. This proposal aims to bridge the gap between the eyewitness and fundamental memory fields by combining standardized stressors and naturalistic eyewitness paradigms in a project that investigates the effects of stress during a crime on eyewitness event memory and identification performance.

    Sense of Self in Persons with a Dementia Syndrome
    Prof. dr. J.B.A.M. Schilderman (RU),

    A common conception is that dementia destroys the sense of self. We explore how a far more sophisticated idea of the self can be traced back in various types of dementia with the aim to renew one-sided views of dementia that identify brain-disease with complete self-loss. Based on a philosophical inquiry and in-depth interviews with people suffering from dementia and their caregivers we expect to uncover senses of self that up until now have not been recognized in dementia care and that may contribute to an innovation of person-oriented ‘self-care’.

    The FORAS project: Fully Open-source and Real-time AI-aided systematic literature screening in inclusive databases
    Prof. dr. A.G.J. van de Schoot (UU),

    In the tsunami of new scientific knowledge, imagine developing guidelines for interventions, treatments, or working on any scientifically based study: there’s not enough time to read everything. Solutions from the field of artificial intelligence are typically closed-source, which is problematic in the era of transparency, especially if AI is making decisions. Moreover, most literature searches are biased toward western studies published in English. Therefore, the current project proposes to develop a fully open-source and real-time AI-aided pipeline using inclusive databases.

    Machine Learning and Market Outcomes
    Dr. C. Seel (UM),

    Computerised decisions play a large and increasing role in the modern society. For instance, dating apps suggest potential partners and firms hire workers and set sales prices based on computer recommendations. The researchers study risks and benefits of replacing human decisions by computers in different markets. For example, firms might coordinate on higher gas or oil prices based on computer recommendations, leading to increased poverty levels in the population. The researchers develop methods to detect such problems from a given dataset.

    “Soft” Antisemitism? Cartoons and the Decline of Democracy in Interwar Czechoslovakia
    Dr. E.M. Stanczyk (UvA),

    We know that antisemitic cartoons existed in interwar authoritarian states. Less is known about the influence of such cartoons on democracies. This project focuses on one model democracy of the time: interwar Czechoslovakia. Who produced and consumed antisemitic cartoons, and how did they contribute to the decline of democratic order?

    Learning to solve analogies: Why do children excel where AI models fail?
    Dr. C.E. Stevenson (UvA),

    Body is to feet as tree is to …? Children become capable of solving such analogies around four-to-five years of age (answer: roots). Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems provide less optimal answers such as “leaves”. Analogical reasoning lies at the heart of human intelligence. Why can't AI systems reason by analogy as well as children do? This project examines how children learn to solve analogies that challenge AI, generating insights to create more robust and trustworthy AI-systems, while providing key insights into human intelligence and how it develops.

    Roman Fake News? Documentary Fictions in the Roman Empire
    Dr. L.E. Tacoma (LEI),

    How new is fake news? This project investigates manipulated and forged official documents from the Roman imperial period. There is a remarkable number of official texts whose authenticity is debated: some may be authentic, some are probably forged, while others seem to have been manipulated. These documentary fictions show strong resemblances to modern fake news, for example in the way they circulated and were used. How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned? And what does it mean if in the past fake news also occurred? Does it make the modern variety less threatening?

    One plus one is more than two: Why are bilingual children more successful in learning foreign languages at school?
    Dr. E. Tribushinina (UU),

    Bilingual pupils often perform better in English and other foreign languages compared to their monolingual peers. This holds for typically-developing children and pupils with developmental language disorder (DLD). But the underlying causes of the bilingual advantages are possibly different for children with and without DLD. In this project, we aim to discover why bilingualism offers benefits in foreign language learning. To this end, learners’ progress in English is studied in relation to the development of their cognitive skills, motivation and proficiency in the school language (Dutch) and the home language (Turkish or Polish).

    How Google and Instagram change the city
    Prof. dr. J.L. Uitermark (UvA),

    We see the city increasingly through the lens of digital platforms. The city appears as a collection of hip places filled with beautiful people on Instagram, while Google Maps provides ratings and reviews for even such mundane places as parking lots and sport clubs. This research project argues that digital platforms like Instagram and Google do not only represent the city in specific ways. They also shape it. Using digital data and ethnographic methods, the researchers show how places are being transformed for likes.

    Revamping the Innovative Sprit of Microfinance
    Dr. R.B. Uras (UvT),

    Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) aim to reduce poverty and contribute to economic growth by providing affordable loans to poor individuals via innovative instruments (e.g., group-loans). Despite this promise, MFI interest rates have increased recently due to high operational costs of existing loan products, adding to the stress of poor borrowers. The objective of my research is to provide MFIs with novel and effective group-loan instruments to reduce their operational costs. Re-harnessing social capital’s role in group-loans, the concept that was at the heart of the microfinance revolution in the 1970s, will be the key novelty of my research in revamping microfinance.

    On the malleability of confidence in preferences
    Prof. dr. H.P. Veling (WUR),

    People acquire preferences for products such as candy or apples through experiences. When these experiences are more similar (candy is almost always tasty) we gain more confidence in our preferences than when the experiences are more dissimilar (apples can be tasty or bland). Confidence in preferences is useful as it summarizes previous experiences, but it may cause difficulties with resisting temptations. This project examines the changeability and malleability of confidence in preferences, and how this confidence can hamper and stimulate resisting temptations.

    Causal relationships between smoking and mental illness
    Prof. dr. C.J.H. Verweij (Amsterdam UMC),

    Smokers have a higher risk of mental illness (such as depression, anxiety, or schizophrenia), but it is not clear why this is the case. Researchers will use novel, interdisciplinary methods to investigate whether smoking causes people to develop a mental illness or vice versa, whether a mental illness causes smoking. Once the relationships between smoking and mental illness are clarified, researchers will investigate how this knowledge of causal relationships influences people’s perceptions of smoking, motivation to quit, and feelings of empowerment. The findings will be used to inform policy makers about more effective public health communication on smoking.

    How STREET-Level Norms Make the Migration REGIME
    Dr. D.V. Vigneswaran (UvA),

    Ordinary officials, smugglers, employers, and migrants determine how migration control works on the ground. STREETREGIME aims to discover whether these ‘street-level’ actors also have the power to change how national elites make immigration policies. STREETREGIME sheds light on this question through qualitative research in South Africa and Mexico.

    Robust Dynamics: A Broader Bayesian View on Change
    Prof. dr. E.M. Wagenmakers (UvA),

    Dynamic models allow researchers to assess the effectiveness of an intervention on the level of a single individual: to what extent is a novel learning method effective for the pupil Miruna? To what extent is a particular therapy effective for the patient Richard? The standard analysis hinges on a single selected dynamic model that is highly sensitive to anomalies in the data. This project aims to robustify the analysis by considering multiple models and multiple analysts simultaneously, and grading the evidence for treatment effectiveness on a continuous scale. The methodology will be implemented in JASP.

    Culture Wars and Modern Worldviews: A Transnational Conceptual History
    Prof. dr. T.H. Weir (RUG),

    How did “worldview” develop into a key concept in academia, policy, and public debate in twenty-first century US, UK, the Netherlands and Latin America? Situating the concept’s formation in modern culture wars, beginning in nineteenth-century Germany, the project investigates how worldview has entered into social movements, led to new theories in the sciences and is now shaping the reform of religious education. It will provide critical tools for a better understanding of the sometimes conflictual interactions of the religious and the secular in history and in the contemporary world.

    Emotional labour in the borderlands: New perspectives on ethno-racial profiling
    Prof. dr. M.A.H. van der Woude (LEI),

    Ethno-racial profiling by law enforcement officials continues to be a problem causing societal harm and leading to declining trust in government and its agencies. Through a combination of academic and artistic research this project will examine how different feelings and (moral) values experienced by an officer can get conflicted in the context of border policing, and how this affects decision-making processes. The hitherto underexposed tension and interaction between society, organization and individual officer plays a central role in this. By means of this innovative approach, the project will offer new knowledge on how to successfully combat this problematic policing practice.

Open Competition SSH (2018-2021)

  • Granted projects 2021

    Crossing language borders
    prof. dr. E.O. Aboh (UvA), dr. F.K. Ameka (LEI), dr. M.C.P.C Parafita Couto (LEI)

    Multilinguals easily weave their languages together like artists engaged in a colourful painting on a canvas. This process is called code-switching/code-mixing (CSCM). In multilingual communities like in Benin (West Africa) and Belize (Central America), CSCM is the norm in conversations, but we still don’t know how speakers mentally adapt to such multilingual contexts. Using analytic tools of the language sciences, the project seeks to understand how multilingual speakers do it. The findings can impact policies and practices of language use in education in these and similar multilingual communities where language mixing is the daily practice.

    Nthing is Logical
    dr. M.D. Aloni (UvA)

    When told that you may stay or go, you normally conclude that you may stay and you may go, contrary to the prescriptions of classical logic. This project investigates such cases of divergence between human and logical-mathematical reasoning and, challenging the canonical view, hypotheses that they are a straightforward consequence of a tendency in human cognition to neglect empty representations (horror vacui). We will develop logics which model this tendency and rigorously isolate its effects on deductions and interpretation; and experimentally test the precise predictions arising from these formalisations.

    How literacy shapes language learning: a longitudinal approach
    dr. S.J. Andringa (UvA)

    If you cannot read and write, then you probably do not know what a word is exactly, or that a letter represents one of the sounds we can make when speaking. Without such knowledge, it may be difficult to learn a language. We know that literacy imbues all kinds of cognitive changes, but we do not understand well yet what these changes mean for how a language is learned. This project tries to understand how literacy changes language acquisition by following groups of emerging readers (children and adults) longitudinally, when learning a language and simultaneously learning to read and write.

    Innovating Methods for Open Science in Qualitative Management Research (OPEN-QUAL)
    prof. dr. ir. J.J. Berends (VU)

    Open science principles inspire collaboration in research. Sharing qualitative data obtained in management research, however, has been constrained by concerns for data privacy and confidentiality. OPEN-QUAL develops methodological principles for an innovative, decentralized approach to data reuse with no sharing of raw data. Decentralized analysis makes it possible to leverage the versatility of qualitative data and enables comparison across cases and datasets. We facilitate future data reuse by developing a discovery platform for finding relevant qualitative datasets and disseminating protocols. Thereby OPEN-QUAL contributes to more effective use of resources invested in qualitative research in management and other domains.

    Corporate noncompliance: a life-course approach
    prof. dr. mr. A.A.J. Blokland (NSCR), prof. dr. H.C. Dekker (VU), prof. dr. J.L. Wielhouwer (VU)

    From severe environmental pollution to global financial crisis, corporate rule breaking can have a major impact on our daily safety, security and wellbeing. Building on insights from life-course criminology, this research aims at explaining and predicting patterns of corporate noncompliance and regulatory enforcement, and at estimating the effects of different kinds of enforcement on corporate rule breaking. Knowledge gained can directly benefit the efficiency and effectiveness of regulatory monitoring and enforcement and, with that, contribute to welfare benefits that are achieved by the prevention of corporate harm doing.

    How do informal caregivers survive? A study on care networks and wellbeing among Dutch care recipients, their partners and children.
    prof. dr. M.I. Broese van Groenou (VU)

    The fact that more and more older adults need informal care puts a lot of pressure on their partners and children. A solution would be to share the care in a care network with informal and professional caregivers. FAMCARE examines under which individual, family and societal conditions 1) different care network types arise, and 2) care networks contribute to the wellbeing of care recipients, partners and children. FAMCARE uses unique data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA, 1992-2022) and replicates the 2001 multi-actor study among partners and children of LASA-respondents to compare 1) and 2) over time.

    Getting consumers to switch to sustainable and healthier food.
    prof. dr. ir. B.J.J.A.M. Bronnenberg PhD (UvT)

    This research seeks to understand what makes consumers buy sustainable and healthy food options. It empirically studies grocery purchases of individual consumers over the past 2 decades, during which many of such food options were introduced. The research program will disentangle three forces on the formation of food preferences: (1) personal characteristics, (2) consumption history, and (3) marketing by retailers and manufacturers. It will empirically test to what extent preferences are formed or intrinsically present, and whether the marketing strategies of firms affect long-term preferences. These findings will next be used to propose policy to stimulate sustainable food choices.

    Digital warfare in the Sahel: Popular networks of war and Cultural Violence
    prof. dr. M.E. de Bruijn (LEI)

    Violent conflict is on the increase in the Sahel since 2012, coinciding with the increased use of social media in the region. The organisation of networks and their information flows are changing, and this project studies the conflict as a digitally and physically networked one. Cultural violence—the legitimation of violence—spreads through (trans)regional networks, and discursive and ‘real’ warfare become entangled. This interdisciplinary project focuses on (trans)regional Fulani networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict. The project warns of possible increases in ethnic violence, resulting from digital media uses.

    Fighting fake news and stereotype
    prof. dr. B.P. de Bruin (RUG)

    Fake news, COVID-19 myths on social media, climate change denial in parliament, sexist stereotypes in business – irrational and sometimes outright false beliefs have become an unmistakable societal concern. We develop theory and practical tools to counter fake news and prejudice in individuals and organizations. In this project, philosophers collaborate with social scientists, policy makers, and the private and non-profit sector.

    ELDER: Life-Event Longitudinal Description and Explanation Research
    prof. dr. J.J.A. Denissen (UU)

    Negative life events, like becoming unemployed, can reduce well-being (e.g., increasing depression, loneliness). But when do such effects occur, and does this differ between people with different personalities or cultures? The Life-Event Longitudinal Description and Explanation Research (ELDER) project develops better methods to describe how effects of life events unfold. And it will measure key psychological processes and individual differences and investigate how the effects of negative life events differ between cultures. With this knowledge, people can gain insight in how to better cope with negative life events in their own lives or that of their clients.

    On the representation of quantity: how our brains shape language
    prof. dr. J.S. Doetjes (LEI)

    Quantity expressions in languages of the world show remarkable similarities that cannot be explained by descent from common ancestors. Are these similarities due to properties of human cognition? This project investigates properties of quantity expressions across languages in the light of what we know about the mental representation of quantity, thus aiming at gaining insight in how our brains shape language.

    Now or never: Discovering the psychology of communicating tipping points for social change
    dr. K. Epstude (RUG), prof. dr. M. van Zomeren (RUG)

    Can social change be facilitated by communicating tipping points (e.g., it’s “now or never”)? This project answers this scientifically and societally relevant question through testing a novel social-psychological model. We combine interviews, experimental studies, and an interactive simulated society paradigm to empirically evaluate the motivating power of communicating tipping points and its social spread through group-based interaction. Moreover, based on our findings, we develop and test a proof-of-concept for an intervention to foster social change. As such, the project will develop a more comprehensive understanding of how communicating tipping points facilitates social change to solve important societal challenges.

    The Language Leak
    dr. S.L. Frank (RU)

    People who speak multiple languages do not have a “fire wall” in their brain to keep the languages apart: knowledge of one language affects use of the other. The researchers will develop a precise, mathematical description of this “language leak” by having a computer simulate its causes and its consequences.

    Digitizing mom and pop’s supply chain: competitiveness of independent retailers at the bottom of the pyramid
    prof. J. Fransoo (UvT)

    Low-income consumers at the base of the global pyramid paradoxically often pay more for their daily groceries than middle-income consumers in the same countries. Much of this paradox is due to the high fragmentation of the retail channel where they buy their goods, leading to high supply chain cost. Smartphone-based technologies can close this gap, reduce the cost of living for these low-income consumers, and continue to provide a livelihood to the millions of shopkeepers that serve them. Using granular transactional data of delivery vehicles, sales agents, and replenishment orders, the researchers study the impact of this rapid digitization.

    The Holocaust in the Provinces: Local Dynamics in the Nazi-Occupied Netherlands (1925-1950)
    dr. G.G. von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel (UU), dr. D.G. Hondius (VU)

    Over a third of the approximately 104,000 deported Dutch Jews came from small towns and villages. Despite a growing number of local studies, there is little systematic insight into the impact of local factors and actors on the persecution. This research follows the international trend to view the persecution of Jews not only as a centrally led, but also as a locally embedded process. At the same time, this study of the 'Provinzentjudung' in the Netherlands transcends the local perspective by taking a comparative approach and by examining the impact of intermunicipal connections on local dynamics of persecution and aid.

    Getting to the CoRe: a Communicative Receptive approach to language learning and mutual understanding in multilingual academic contexts
    prof. dr. H.C.J. de Graaff (UU)

    The language barrier in Dutch can hold internationals back from participation in meetings of participatory bodies when Dutch is the main language of administration in the Netherlands. Receptive multilingualism might offer solutions for diverse language situations, as many internationals do not need to develop advanced proficiency in productive (spoken and written) Dutch to communicate effectively. They can develop receptive proficiency in Dutch and use their productive proficiency in English. This study aims to explore to what extent a receptive approach in foreign language use can improve the communicative effectiveness in receptive multilingual settings to create a more inclusive international environment.

    Love, sex, faith. The politics of emotion in migration law
    prof. mr. dr. B. de Hart (VU)

    How to decide whether a person is truly gay or believes in Jesus, or whether a couple is genuinely in love? How can one objectively determine such a subjective issue as human emotions? This is the dilemma that those involved in immigration procedures (immigration officers, judges, lawyers, NGOs and migrants) face on a daily basis. This socio-legal project takes together family migration and asylum cases: suspected marriages of convenience, and asylum claims based on sexual orientation and religious conversion to explore how the politics of emotion functions as an instrument of inclusion and exclusion in migration control.

    A resilient European Union? European economic reforms meet politicisation
    prof. dr. M. Haverland (EUR)

    The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the EU hard, also economically. Some member states have been hit harder than others, however, threatening the stability of the EU. In response, the EU has made a massive budget available for investments, linked to implementing domestic reforms long requested by the EU. Will the EU's additional resources make a difference? Does the political game change because pro-reform players are empowered? Are they taking up the gauntlet energetically, by cleverly framing reforms and thereby breaking resistance, or are Eurosceptic forces holding them back? This will be investigated for Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

    Philanthropic Foundations and Global Justice
    dr. A. Kalfagianni (UU)

    Private philanthropic foundations increasingly shape what global justice means and how it should be implemented. This deserves scrutiny because philanthropy, beyond an act of giving, is an exercise of power. This project provides critical knowledge on how diverse foundations shape global justice and with what consequences for sustainability policies worldwide.

    The emotional dynamics of norm-violating behavior
    prof. dr. G.A. van Kleef (UvA)

    Adherence to norms is crucial for healthy societies. Still, norm violations are all around. People jump queues, commit fraud, vandalize property, and engage in sexual harassment. Moreover, such behaviors can spread to become systemic problems. To understand when this happens and what can be done about it, we need to understand how observers respond to violators. Do they oppose them, turn a blind eye, or even support them? I will investigate observers’ emotional and behavioral responses to violations to uncover when norm violations spread and when they are contained. Insights can be used to more effectively manage (counter)normative behavior.

    Double robust inference for structural economic models
    prof. dr. F.R. Kleibergen (UvA)

    The empirics of structural economic models is often such that they are so-called weakly identified and/or misspecified. There are, however, currently no statistical methods available that remain reliable for such settings. The "Double robust inference for structural economic models" project therefore aims to develop: (i) double robust inference methods that remain reliable under both settings and which can readily be applied by practitioners for a wide range of commonly used structural economic models; and (ii) novel econometric toolkits for easy usage, enabling practitioners to use double robust inference methods for their research questions.

    The growing pains of increasing team diversity
    prof. dr. D.L. van Knippenberg (EUR)

    Research points to the benefits of team diversity, but does not speak to what it means for team functioning when team diversity changes. We study changes in team functional and cultural diversity, and outline how diversity change, and diversity increase in particular, requires careful management not to let team functioning suffer from “growing pains”.

    Learning from your errors: the development of word production in young children
    prof. dr. C.C. Levelt (LEI), prof. dr. J.P.M. Fikkert (RU)

    Young children will often say ‘“tuck” when referring to the word ‘truck’. Is “tuck” a speech error or does it result from flawed articulation? They could also have stored the word ‘truck’ as ‘tuck’ in their mental dictionary, due to incomplete perception or storage of all the sounds. Learning to speak involves the simultaneous acquisition of knowledge at several different levels and practice with applying this knowledge swiftly and smoothly when required. Errors are bound to arise in the immature system, but they also highlight what needs to be updated to the learner. This learning process will be charted.

    Cascading transitions in multistable perception and cognition
    prof. dr. H.L.J. van der Maas (UvA)

    Sudden transitions can spread within and across systems. Those who come to believe in conspiracies undergo such a transition but this is rarely limited to one person. Addiction is another example. Within a person, cascading transitions occur in multi-stable perception and cognition (logical paradoxes). To develop the general model of 'cascading transitions', we test this mathematical model for these two tractable cases. For this purpose, we develop innovative experimental designs and use recently developed psychophysiological measurement methods.

    Preventing Miscarriages of Justice
    prof. dr. A.R. Mackor (RUG), prof. dr. D.A. Lagnado (UCL), prof. dr. C. Dahlman (LundU)

    Over the last 20 years, miscarriages of justice, such as Lucia de Berk (the Netherlands), Sally Clark (United Kingdom) and Thomas Quick (Sweden), have led to social and scientific debate on how to prevent errors in the judicial evaluation of evidence. Preventing Miscarriages of Justice will investigate how judges can evaluate evidence more rationally by 1. integrating the two main theoretical approaches to evidence evaluation; 2. developing, on this basis, an integrated method that will enable judges to reason more rationally about evidence in criminal cases; and 3. empirically testing the efficacy of the method.

    Facing the Border: The Itineraries of Tunisian Visa Applicants for the Schengen Area
    prof. dr. A.A. M'charek (UvA)

    Emigration from North Africa to Europe is often seen through the lens of crisis and catastrophe, neglecting the growing number of individuals who enter or attempt to enter Europe through legal channels. Facing the Border is an ethnographic study of the bureaucratic procedures of visa applications in Tunisia for the Schengen Area. Through its focus on everyday bureaucratic practices, the project will contribute to the scholarship on migration and the anthropology of bureaucracy with novel insights on the externalisation of Europe’s borders and how the border is folded into mundane bureaucratic practices.

    Our brain during everyday activities
    prof. dr. W.P. Medendorp (RU), prof. dr. T.M. Heskes (RU), dr. N.L.W. Keijsers (RU)

    Neuroscientific findings about the perception-action cycle obtained from impoverished lab environments cannot readily be transferred to real-life situations, such as at home, in traffic or in sports. This project uses virtual reality and wearable technology, and methods from data science and artificial intelligence, to connect laboratory findings with individual behaviour in the real world and to utilize the new Neuroscience knowledge for clinical practice.

    Understanding reading comprehension
    prof. dr. M. Meeter (VU), dr. M. van der Schoot (VU)

    Reading comprehension is a crucial skill that is highly predictive of later success in education. Unfortunately, more and more students seem to be insufficiently apt at comprehension. Here, we create a comprehensive model of reading from recognizing letters up to understanding the sense of a sentence. With this model, we scrutinize how comprehension affects eye movements in reading, and how it is reflected in brain signals. We also model the different ways in which comprehension of a text can fail. The project results in more understanding of reading comprehension, and clues to how it can be improved in students.

    Church and Slavery in the Dutch Empire: History, Theology and Heritage
    prof. dr. A.B. Merz (PThU), prof. dr. G. Harinck (VU)

    In this research project we study the role of the Reformed Church in the Dutch colonial past. We look at the theological and exegetical arguments put forward by church and academic theologians to defend or criticise slavery and at the concrete financial, social and administrative role of the church in slavery and the slave trade (missionary, pastoral, the church as slave owner, investor, gatekeeper). Multiple perspectives are included (enslaved people, former slaves, indigenous people, mixed groups and white colonizers) and attention is paid to the legacy of slavery in today's churches and society.

    Not too many, not too few: calculating sample sizes for testing informative hypotheses.
    dr. ir. M. Moerbeek (UU)

    There are several methods for testing hypotheses in social, behavioral and biomedical research. The Bayesian method allows expectations and prior knowledge to be used to formulate and weigh multiple hypotheses against each other based on empirical data. This method is increasingly used but little is known about required sample sizes. This project designs methods for sample size calculations and related software when the data have a multilevel structure, such as students in schools. The results of this project will enable empirical research to be designed in a cost-effective manner.

    Clean: an inquiry into co-existing values-in-tension
    prof. dr. A. Mol (UvA)

    When people clean their bodies, clothes, or kitchens, they dirty the water. Wastewater treatment plants are able to reclaim organic materials from the sewage, but leave micropollutants to flow out into rivers and oceans. Such complexities form the starting point of this research. How are different variants of ‘clean’ currently being served, neglected or undermined in households and in wastewater treatment plants in the Netherlands? What helps and what hinders attempts to care for different variants of ‘clean’ at the same time? As we pursue these questions, we aim to draw lessons for both cleaning practices and valuation theory.

    Child separation: Politics and practices of children’s upbringing by faith‐based organisations in (post)colonial Indonesia (1808‐1984)
    prof. dr. M.E. Monteiro (RU), prof. dr. G.A. Mak (NL‐Lab; Huygens ING)

    Not only in Australia and Canada, but also in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia, groups of children were separated from their parent(s) to be fostered, adopted or raised in faith‐based children’s homes. This project analyses the entanglement of these practices with colonial and national politics, and traces the voices and perspectives of affected children and their descendants. The output will include a digital map of children’s homes, which will help former pupils and their relatives to trace fractured family lines. In addition, reconstructions of life stories will bring institutional records into conversation with personal memories and family archives.

    Migration and Innovation: an historical perspective
    dr. A. Morrison (UU)

    Between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century the US received more than 30 million immigrants who were escaping poverty and persecution at home. Although the vast majority was made by unskilled workers, many were or became inventors. During this period of time the US became the world industrial and technological leader. Is there a link between the massive inflows of diverse ideas and experiences immigrants brought to the US and its rise as global technological leader? This project will answer this compelling question.

    Gender ratio and power dynamics in mixed-gender teams: Implications for gender inequality in organizations
    prof. dr. B.A. Nijstad (RUG), prof. dr. M. van Vugt (VU)

    To increase the influence of women in the top of their organizations, many countries, including the Netherlands, have introduced gender quota. However, we do not really know how changes in gender ratio (the number of women versus men) affect the relative influence of women in decision making bodies. We examine this question from a new perspective assuming that individuals (men and women) acquire influence in a dynamic way by claiming and granting it. We also investigate how these dynamic processes eventually affect the opportunities of women versus men for promotion within organizations.

    At Home Otherwise: Rethinking Heritage through Diversity
    prof. dr. P.J. Pels (LEI)

    Despite research into minoritized groups’ homes, and attempts to diversify heritage policies and practices, many initiatives remain stuck on ‘us’/’them’ oppositions governing authorized heritage discourses and its forms of exclusion. But ‘home’ cannot be reduced to such an opposition: we remember earlier homes and travelling away from them; we make ‘home’ where we are with those memories, but also with future wishes en desires; and under conditions shaped by others. Looking at heritage through this more complex lens, we ask how it may help reforming and democratizing authorized heritage-talk and its associated practices.

    Virtual Reality as Empathy Machine: Media, Migration and the Humanitarian Predicament
    prof. dr. S. Ponzanesi (UU)

    VR has been postulated as the ultimate ‘empathy machine’ that allows someone to transcend the confines of their own body and see things from another character’s point of view. For this reason, it has increasingly been used for humanitarian appeals to bridge the gap between ‘spectator’ and ‘distant sufferer’, with the aim of soliciting donations and enhancing public engagement. This project analyses the potentialities and desirability of VR for humanitarian appeals by combining media analysis and empirical research with a postcolonial framework. It aims to envision alternative, collaborative and participatory approaches and designs.

    How background uncertainty affects prosocial behavioral
    prof. dr. A.M. Riedl (UM)

    The Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, mass migration, flexible labour markets and uncertain pension payments are all examples of increased background uncertainty, that is, uncertainty beyond individual control. This project investigates at the behavioral and brain level how background uncertainty affects social preferences, that is, how much one takes into account the well being of others, and social norm compliance, that is, how motivated one is to voluntarily follow a behavioral rule that is personally costly. Understanding the effect is important because erosion of either social preferences or social norm compliance can have negative societal effects through decreased solidarity among citizens.

    Can you touch red? Cross-modal 'translation' of visual features into tactile surface properties.
    dr. R. Rouw (UvA)

    Can you touch 'red'? Is it smooth, wet, or sticky? We study an extraordinary condition called touch-colour synesthesia, where touching a particular (e.g., 'soft') surface, evokes a particular colour (e.g., 'white-yellow'). Remarkably, non-synesthetes have similar touch-to-colour associations, but without being aware of it. We test the hypothesis that such associations are 'innate', in blind individuals. The project addresses scientific questions on sensory information processes in the brain, and has societal implications; an open-access 'translator' from physical surface properties, to tactile experiences, to colour associations. We examine applications of this knowledge as translated colours, and 'visual' art, for the blind.

    The dynamics of inequality
    prof. A.G. Sanfey (RU)

    How do our perceptions of inequality impact how we decide, both for ourselves and towards others? This project investigates the mechanisms by which social inequality influences decision-making. Innovative behavioural and brain imaging experiments are combined with computational modelling to build a detailed understanding of how decision-making is affected by inequality.

    Sustainability trade-offs in the Netherlands’ entangled modernisation, 1900-2020.
    prof. dr. J.P.H. Smits (TUE), prof. dr. J.W. Schot (UU)

    The Netherlands has Europe´s worst performance in foreign sustainability trade-offs to least developed countries. The huge Dutch imports of raw materials and goods have had profound consequences for economic, social, and ecological developments elsewhere on the planet. These trade-offs have historical origins. From the nineteenth century onwards, scientific knowledge, colonial developments and industrial modernization contributed to the development of transnational production chains. These connected the Netherlands with the rest of the world. This historical study analyses the developments in edible oils and metals, thus providing perspectives for contemporary initiatives in protein and energy transitions.

    The Facing Srebrenica Project
    dr. G.J.A. Snel (UvA)

    From January 1994 until July 1995, Dutch UN soldiers made a large number of private photos during the siege of Srebrenica. These photos show life in the enclave, and many of them contain images of people who were killed in the genocide in July 1995. This project will archive and open up this visual heritage for future generations, in close collaboration with survivors and veterans in Bosnia, the Netherlands and Europe. Drawing on the photos, the project will develop an inclusive history of Srebrenica, also for commemoration purposes.

    Displaced and disheartened – helping refugees take back control of their lives
    prof. dr. D.P. van Soest (UvT)

    One of the main goals of humanitarian aid is to help refugees regain control of their own lives as quickly as possible. This is challenging because trauma, poverty, and stress lower ambitions as well as the ability to implement intended plans. Using an experiment in Ugandan refugee camps, this research investigates how to best increase the effectiveness of financial support in promoting long-term self-reliance.

    New light on old remedies. Tracing medicinal plant use in the Low Countries through archaeogenomics and archaeobotany in the late medieval and early modern period (AD 1500-1800).
    prof. dr. J. Symonds (UvA), dr. B. Gravendeel (RU)

    This project will study changes in medicinal plant use in the Netherlands Low Countries in the early modern period. The project will develop a new methodology that integrates innovative methods from the digital humanities with state-of-the-art scientific techniques to generate datasets that combine information from historical sources, archaeology, and archaeogenomics. This approach will enable us to formulate new ways of combining information on medicinal plants and health from large but fragmented sets of archival and archaeological data. Our aim is to rediscover the lost or overlooked knowledge of medicinal plant use that is contained within archives and the archaeological record.

    Learning to direct attention in space and time
    prof. dr. J.L. Theeuwes (VU), dr. S.A. Los (VU)

    Without much awareness, we learn and pick up on the statistical regularities present in our environment. In each environment, particular objects appear at particular locations, at particular moments in time. We learn these regularities, and attentional selection priorities are adapted and optimally tuned to these implicit expectations. That is why for example we are able to cross a busy road or are able to return a tennis ball. This project seeks to find out how we learn to attend to particular locations at particular moments in time.

    What is normal? Accurate norming norms and its use for psychological tests
    prof. dr. M.E. Timmerman (RUG), dr. C.J. Albers (RUG)

    Psychological tests, as intelligence tests, are widely used, like for diagnosis and selection. Test administrations are interpreted using test norms. Currently, norms are less accurate than possible, creating norms requires more effort than necessary, and the interpretation of norms by end users is often hampered by insufficiently available information. We develop advanced norming methods that make (1) scoring tests, (2) designing a normative study, and (3) interpreting test results more precise and simpler than is possible now. This makes the development, maintenance and use of high-quality psychological tests easier and cheaper, which greatly benefits test practice.

    Hear Hear! Promoting the participation of children in the context of their parents’ divorce
    dr. I.E. van der Valk (UU), prof. dr. M. Dekovic (UU)

    Following parental separation or divorce, children’s voices and their legal right to participate are currently insufficiently guaranteed in families, during mediation, and in courts. There is a lack of scientific knowledge on how best to give effect to child participation. This study investigates whether children's participation in divorce-related decisions increases their sense of autonomy, relatedness, and competence, and thus improves their general functioning. In addition, possible risks of child participation to their adjustment are examined, as well as individual differences in this regard. The research will result in practical guidelines and tools to improve the participation of children around divorce.

    Apocalypse and Climate Change
    prof. dr. C. Vander Stichele (UvT)

    This project focuses on present-day religious vocabularies that have become part of our western cultural and scientific reservoir and are used in the context of climate change. It aims to analyse how these vocabularies affect their user’s interpretations and attitudes. The presence of such vocabularies is researched within groups that are active on social media in The Netherlands and share a common interest in climate change. Its central question is: How do religious vocabularies impact climate change discourse, understood as the way in which climate change is presented, interpreted, and discussed across modern audio-visual media in the Netherlands?

    Compensation as Punishment
    prof. mr. dr. W.J. Veraart (VU)

    Is the compensation order that can be imposed in criminal proceedings in the Netherlands a reparatory or a punitive sanction? Although the compensation order is treated by lawyers as a non-punitive measure, both victims and perpetrators sometimes seem to experience it as a form of punishment. This project aims to explore this question further, by comparing with England and France, where the compensation order is understood differently, and by examining how the compensation order is perceived by victims, convicted offenders and the general public. What does it mean for criminal law if the compensation measure is regarded as punishment?

    SOY STORIES: Connected sustainability histories and futures of the global Soyacene
    prof. dr. ir. E.B.A. van der Vleuten (TUE), prof. dr. J.E.W. Broerse (VU)

    Since the 1970s, the large-scale production of soy in Brazil and soy-based intensive animal farming in the Netherlands have resulted in a wide variety of sustainability challenges, such as large-scale deforestation, land-grabbing and child labour in Brazil and a long-term national nitrogen-crisis, public health problems and animal suffering in the Netherlands. SOY STORIES investigates the histories of these diverse sustainability challenges, and studies how they were connected in the past. In addition, SOY STORIES investigates how such historical knowledge may contribute to the development of more inclusive and connected sustainable future imaginaries.

    Preventing ecological tipping in drylands
    dr. ir. F.O.O. Wagener (UvA), dr. ir. F. van Langevelde (WUR)

    Many pastoral communities depend on drylands, together with their livestock, but these areas are highly susceptible for droughts and overgrazing. Drylands are characterized by several ecological tipping points that can cause land degradation. We will study decisions of pastoral communities about the number of livestock, grazing time and fire frequency to prevent the grazing systems to collapse. This will be done by investigating (1) how socially optimal policies affect these tipping points, (2) the effects of absence of cooperation between different pastoral communities, and (3) how stable coalitions can prevent collapse.

    Party-Political Contestation of the Liberal International Order
    prof. dr. W.M. Wagner (VU)

    Free movement of goods and people, rule-based cooperation, and military interventions to protect and promote liberal values abroad are the three pillars of the liberal international order (LIO). The withdrawal of Western military forces from Afghanistan and the growing pressure on governments to defend sovereignty against international institutions show that this liberal order is in crisis. This project studies the patterns of political parties' support for and opposition against the three pillars of the LIO in various regions of the world in order to understand better what is driving the crisis of the LIO.

    How humans see surfaces: Filling-in gaps of knowledge using high resolution functional magnetic resonance (HR-fMRI) imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
    prof. dr. P.H.M. de Weerd (UM)

    Imagine you would only see object and surface boundaries, and nothing in-between. You won’t be able to see where to place your feet while walking, or grasp objects. Hence, functional visual perception requires perceiving edges as well as filling in the surface in-between. Yet, little is known about how the human brain fills in surfaces. This project combines ultra-high field fMRI and non-invasive brain stimulation (TMS) to investigate the role of feedback influences from higher brain centers on the representation of surface information in lower-level visual cortical areas.

    Experiencing Fragments
    prof. dr. A.B. Wessels (LEI)

    Fragments are fascinating because they invite re-construction. Yet, for the same reason they are dangerous: it seems impossible to start a reconstruction without applying certain biases. Understanding how humans interpret fragments requires a multi-pronged approach, that incorporates insights on the historical, aesthetic, experiential and technical fronts.

    This project will create an online platform for the fragments of early Roman tragedy, and develop digital tools for researching and experimenting with this textually fragmented material. We shall explore how fragments have been experienced in the past and show how these experiences can support students by training them in bias awareness.

    Do you look me in the eye when I am talking to you? Effects of age and social anxiety
    prof. dr. P.M. Westenberg (LEI)

    Social anxiety concerns negative evaluation and rejection by others. Socially anxious adults avoid eye-contact, which may inadvertently maintain or aggravate their anxiety. Little is known about (avoidance of) eye-contact in childhood and adolescence. We will compare eye-contact between children and adolescents with and without social anxiety problems to clarify both normal development of eye-contact and what goes wrong in socially anxious youth. In addition to the total duration of eye-contact, we will compare specific gaze patterns, such as to what extent (non) socially anxious children and adolescents follow implicit rules relating gaze behavior to turn-taking in a conversation.

    Forgotten Lineages. Afterlives of Dutch Slavery in the Indian Ocean World
    prof. dr. N.K. Wickramasinghe (LEI)

    This research project explores the paths through which generations of the formally enslaved and their descendants gradually forgot their past of enslavement under Dutch and British imperial rule and became local subjects. Its central question is why and how forgetting rather than memory became the basis of belonging and selfhood. This project is a rooted study of the hidden afterlives of Dutch slavery in these Indian Ocean territories across generations, in which processes of identity, group and community formation became entangled with forgotten slave ancestries under layered colonialism.

    The FLY (Food-related Lifestyles in Youth) - project: How young people come to adopt more sustainable diets
    prof. dr. J.B.F. de Wit (UU), prof. dr. E. Müller (UU)

    Youth play a crucial role in the societal transition to more sustainable diets. In the FLY-project, we study what youth - in particular those belonging to lower socio-economic groups - think about eating sustainably, and their perceived barriers and facilitators for transitioning towards a more sustainable diet. In high schools, we discuss these issues with young people and investigate (changes in) their diets over time as well as potential underlying mechanisms. Together with youth, we co-create and test intervention strategies that can support youth in the transition to more sustainable diets, with a focus on the role of group processes.

    States in Shock: The Adaptive Capacities of State Administrations to Transboundary Crises
    prof. dr. A.K. Yesilkagit (LEI), dr. P. Bezes (CNRS), dr. S.L. Kuipers (LEI)

    In the last twenty to thirty years, national states have experienced existential and transboundary crises and shocks. The way in which states have dealt with these shocks is far from ideal. In this project, we examine how the governance systems of national states respond to transboundary crises and whether governments are able to adapt them to better absorb future shocks.

    Neanderthals and “us”: how the golden age of Neanderthal research challenges human self-understanding
    prof. dr. H.A.E. Zwart (EUR)

    Our image of Neanderthals is changing rapidly, and this affects long-standing views about ourselves. Increasingly, Neanderthals are regarded as capable of allegedly unique human practices (language, music, symbolism), and therefore as humans, people like us. Although the scientific image of Neanderthals has dramatically shifted, research still tends to focus on anatomical, genetic, psychic and cultural differences (“them” vs. “us”). Our project combines insights from Palaeolithic archaeology, philosophy, and gender studies to analyse how transitions in Neanderthal research challenge our self-understanding, reopening the question: what makes us human?

  • Granted projects 2020

    Salt and power. Early states, Rome and control of resources
    Prof. P.A.J. Attema (RUG)
    Salt is of vital importance to the human food economy and therefore of state importance. Following their discovery that salt production took place on the coast south of Rome as far back as the Bronze Age, the researchers examine how scaling-up took place and early Rome’s role as the main stakeholder.

    Disability and Self-Governance: a Global Microhistory of Het Dorp Community and its Cultural Heritage from the 1960s
    Prof. M.K. Baár (LEI)
    The project undertakes the first comprehensive study of the history of Het Dorp, a self-governing, accessible residential community for approximately 400 people with severe physical disabilities near Arnhem. It uncovers its national significance as well as its hitherto unrecognized international impact and it contributes to the preservation of its heritage.

    Ancient crops for a sustainable future? Millets and culture in India
    P. Berger, PhD (RUG), Prof. R.T.J. Cappers (RUG)
    Millets belong to the founder crops of agriculture. Recently, they are globally promoted as the “smart food” for the future. But how does crop selection relate to culture? Anthropologists and Archaeobotanists combine their expertise to research the nexus of millets and culture, in contemporary India and throughout Indian history.

    Explaining differences in prison populations: the Netherlands versus Belgium
    Prof. M.M. Boone (LEI)
    How is it possible that the number of prisoners has fallen dramatically in the Netherlands since 2005, while in Belgium this number is increasing yet since three decades? This question will be theoretically and empirically investigated in this comparative study. Among other things, the crime rate, the functioning of the criminal justice system and the social climate will be involved.

    Inequities in type 2 diabetes: the role of environmental injustice and chronic stress.
    Prof. J.H.A. Bosma (UMC)
    People with lower incomes are more likely to get diabetes. Often their unhealthy physical activity and dietary patterns are pointed at. The project aims to shift attention to the unequal environments in which people live and work and the chronic stress that poor people can experience because of this.

    The impact of neighbourhood effects and socio-economic status on health over individual life courses
    G.E. Bijwaard, PhD (NIDI), Prof. J.P. Elhorst (RUG)
    This project will investigate how the influence of socio-economic status on health is amplified by social relations of people within a neighbourhood. In particular, we look at how this relation develops over the life course of people, from childhood to mid-life to retirement.

    High-resolution brain scans for understanding cognitive enhancing brain pills
    Prof. R. Cools (RUMC , Prof. D. Norris PhD MSc (RU)
    Our environment changes constantly. Brain dopamine is essential for flexible, goal-directed behaviour. Consider the cognitive enhancing effects of smart drugs that increase dopamine. How does dopamine alter brain function? New high-resolution MRI scans will unravel how common dopamine pills alter communication between brain areas to enhance cognition and behaviour.

    Mind your Manner-Adverbials!
    Prof. N.F.M. Corver (UU)
    Our language allows us to verbalize our manners: someone can speak softly, inarticulately or with care. These ‘manner adverbials’ have their own “linguistic manners”. This project aims to understand those manners by examining their internal structure and distributional behaviour, both from a cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal perspective.

    Advanced speech technology and learning analytics for personalized reading education
    C. Cucchiarini, PhD (RU), Prof. dr. B.P. Veldkamp (UT), Dr. W.A.J. Strik (RU)Adapting automatic speech recognition of Dutch child speech for speech and reading diagnostics and combining it with learning analytics, provides scientific insights into reading development, early detection of reading problems and subsequent personalization of reading instruction to meet the needs of individual children and support them even better.

    Race to the top, or race to the bottom? Complex global regulation and corporate crime
    Prof. J.G. van Erp (UU)
    Multinational corporations face different regulatory demands in different jurisdictions. Regulatory complexity may stimulate compliance with more stringent regimes, but may also create opportunities for strategic behaviour and corporate crime. Case studies of (among others) the Volkswagen Diesel Fraud will further our understanding of regulatory conditions that facilitate corporate crime.

    How Gullible Are We? When and Why Do Consumers Fall Prey to Deceptive Advertising, Fake news and Misinformation?
    Prof. B.M. Fennis (RUG)
    How easily are we deceived by advertising, fake news, and misinformation? Previous research issue has yielded mixed and conflicting results. This project develops and tests a new model that may predict when we are more and when we are less gullible and how we can effectively defend ourselves against deception.

    Recognizing everyday sounds: humans and machines
    Prof. E. Formisano (UM)
    How do we know that the ‘crash’ we heard is from a glass dropped to the floor? In this project, researchers use AI to model how the human brain makes sense of the sounds around us. Concurrently, they study the human brain to improve and make AI more ‘human-like’.

    Highest courts in quest for legitimacy in Public Interest Litigation cases
    Prof. R.A.J. van Gestel (UvT), Prof. M.A. Loth LLM (UvT)
    Supreme courts are criticized for invading the political realm in public interest cases. The proposed research focuses on their response: how do Supreme Courts construct legitimacy in such cases? What arguments, methods, and strategies do they use? What separation of powers concept and democracy model do they apply?

    Strengthening the Rule of Law in Europe
    Prof. M.L.M. Hertogh (RUG)
    Recent developments in Hungary and Poland have caused a rule of law crisis in the European Union. CITIZENS-LAW provides insight into the social perceptions of law that can explain this crisis. The results are translated into a governance toolkit to strengthen the rule of law in Europe.

    Better responding to transactional sex in situations of humanitarian crises
    Prof. D.J.M. Hilhorst (EUR), K.A. Siegman, PhD (EUR)
    Many people survive humanitarian crises through transactional sex – the exchange of sex for cash, goods or services. This research seeks to understand why and how people engage in this and what consequences this has. It will also redress biases in humanitarian services and protection policies for vulnerable people.

    Unravelling our capacity for music
    Prof. H.J. Honing (UvA)
    Musicality is an ability that nearly all human beings possess: a set of traits that allows us to appreciate music. This research aims to identify these constituent traits by means of a series of listening experiments in the form of engaging memory-based games.

    What does it do to you? The impact of using informal or polite pronouns of address across languages
    Prof. H. de Hoop (RU)
    In languages such as Dutch, German, French and Spanish, speakers have a choice between using either a polite or an informal pronoun when addressing others. This research investigates the effect of using either pronoun on the addressee. Experiments will be conducted across languages, situations, genders, and age groups.

    Finding Suitable Grounds: Exploiting buried and submerged Mesolithic-Neolithic landscapes to reconstruct the introduction of crop cultivation.
    D.J. Huisman, PhD (RUG), K.M. Cohen, PhD (UU)
    How did crop cultivation start in the Dutch lowlands? We investigate subsurface landscapes that drowned since the stone age. In geological and geophysical datasets we will identify key locations on river levees. Using corings and microscopic and palaeobotanical techniques we investigate how and how quickly crop cultivation was introduced here.

    Taking Stock. The Amsterdam exchange, investor behaviour, and Dutch economic growth, 1870-1940
    Prof. H.J. de Jong (RUG), Prof. A. de Jong (EUR)
    Economists consider stock exchanges of primordial importance for economy and society. However, we simply do not know whether the world’s oldest exchange, Amsterdam, served Dutch needs properly. We therefore conduct fundamental research into the exchange during a highly dynamic period of both fast growth and deep crisis.

    Visualizing the unknown
    Prof. H.G.M. Jorink (KNAW)
    Facing previously unknown structures as insect-anatomy, bacteria and semen, seventeenth-century pioneers of microscopy had to develop new techniques of preparation, observation, representation and communication. The strategies they developed still form the basis of scientific practice. This project aims at analysing the complexity behind seemingly self-evident scientific images of the micro-world.

    Professional money launderers and money laundering networks
    Prof. E.R. Kleemans (VU)
    For high rolling criminals, money launderers are indispensable in spending their ill-gotten gains in the legal economy. This research focusses on who these money launderers are, why they involve themselves with criminal money, and to what extent they collaborate with each other in money laundering networks.

    Playing Politics: Media platforms, making worlds
    Prof. S. Lammes (LEI)
    Play and politics have always been closely related, as they are both driven by a desire to create worlds. Yet the emergence of current media platforms has challenged the familiar dynamics between play and politics and has put play at the heart of politics. This project examines this shift.

    Empowering women by relieving economic and psychological barriers
    Prof. B.W. Lensink (RUG)
    This project will develop a combination of economic and psychological interventions to improve women’s empowerment. The impact of the newly developed interventions will be evaluated by organising a randomised controlled trial with a microfinance institution in Vietnam.

    Age-friendly communities and well-being realization among older native and immigrant populations in the Netherlands
    Prof. A.P. Nieboer (EUR)
    This project will identify how age-friendly communities help native and immigrant older people in the Netherlands realize well-being, thereby contributing to the resolution of the societal challenges of caring for and supporting older people in the community.

    Understanding the role of IT progress and globalization in economic growth
    Prof. E.C. Perotti (UvA), Prof. E. Bartelsman (VU)
    A slowing global economy and steady rise in inequality are threatening social cohesion. The project investigates the role of IT progress and globalization in causing unequal economic growth, and explains puzzling trends in capital and labour markets. It will guide a sustainable policy for economic and financial stability.

    What is replication?
    Prof. A.J. Pols (AMC), M. Derksen, PhD (RUG)
    If research cannot be replicated, does this mean that the original findings were false? Scientists, philosophers and policymakers debate these fundamental questions. This project furthers the debate about the meaning and usefulness of replication by analysing how replication research is being conducted.

    Neural communication through synchronization of brain rhythms
    Prof. A.T. Sack (UM)
    This project investigates the role of synchronization of 'brain rhythms' for functional networks in the brain to communicate with each other. The findings will be used to improve the reliability and efficacy of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques and to develop personalized neuromodulation interventions for patients suffering from depression.

    Harmful cultural practices in the general practitioner’s consultation room
    Prof. S. Saharso (VU)
    When migrant women visit the general practitioner with complaints related to harmful cultural practices, like depression caused by pressure to marry, they must decide on the course of action. The researchers investigate their moral dilemmas and develop a gender and culture-sensitive ethical framework that supports them in this decision-making process.

    A threat‐and‐coping perspective on social change
    Prof. D.T. Scheepers (LEI), Prof. N. Ellemers (UU)
    Societal changes are often threatening. This threat can lead to bodily stress that colours opinions about the change. Our aim is to develop a psychophysiological model about the interaction between bodily stress and the development of opinions. This model can help to design more effective interventions against societal polarization.

    The right to health: overcoming language barriers in a superdiverse world
    B.C. Schouten, PhD (UvA), J. Suurmond, PhD (AMC)
    Worldwide there are 272 million migrants. Due to communication difficulties between healthcare professionals and patients who do not share a common language, they receive suboptimal quality of care. This project develops and evaluates a decision-aid to overcome language barriers by applying new communication strategies improving communication with migrant patients.

    Control mechanisms of social-emotional regulation
    Prof. I. Toni (RU), Prof. K. Roelofs (RU)
    Emotion regulation is necessary for participating in human society, as evidenced by the isolation often encountered by people suffering from social-anxiety disorder. This project tests the hypothesis that social-emotional regulation is an action selection problem, and uses that knowledge to enhance the efficacy of clinical interventions in social anxiety patients.

    Public Networks and Resilience to Technological Disruption
    Prof. R. Torenvlied (UT)
    Today's society is characterized by sudden events that disrupt our social and economic systems. We combine network science with public administration to understand how local and regional governance networks make us resilient to future cyber-security disruptions. This helps executives, managers and professionals to avoid major crises.

    What drives avoiding pain? Cue-controlled modulation and extinction of pain avoidance behavior.
    Prof. J.W.S. Vlaeyen (UM)
    Individuals with chronic pain often display excessively avoidance behavior. This seriously worsen their level of daily functioning. Here we test the hypothesis that salient environmental cues can invigorate avoidance behavior, even when these cues were never associated with avoidance before. We also examine how these cue-related effects can be mitigated.

    The Lives and Afterlives of Imperial Material Infrastructure in Southeastern China
    Prof. H.G.D.G. De Weerdt (UL)
    Chinese material infrastructures including roads, bridges, and city walls have in the European imagination played an important role in political unity, economic integration, and domestic security. We will map these infrastructures digitally and explain regional processes of and differences in infrastructural development and contraction.

  • Granted projects 2019

    Value-Sensitive and Transparent Algorithmization: Key to Building Citizen Trust?
    Prof. Dr A.J. Meijer (UU), Prof. Dr J.F.T.M. van Dijck  (UU), Dr S.G. Grimmelikhuijsen (UU), Dr M.T. Schäfer (UU) and Prof. Dr F.J. Bex (UU, UvT)Public organizations increasingly use algorithms for work processes. However, this usage has resulted in concerns regarding undesirable outcomes such as a bias or lack of fairness, in contact with citizens. This project investigates how; (1) value-sensitivity and (2) transparency can strengthen citizen trust in the use of these algorithms.

    The impact of online battles: Use and implications of political conflicts in a digital media environment
    Dr S. Kruikemeier (UvA), Prof. Dr R. Vliegenthart (UvA) and Prof. Dr Ir G.J. de Ridder (VU)
    Politicians increasingly use conflict framing on social media. Using distinctions from philosophical literature about disagreement, this project investigates whether and, if so, how the nature of the conflict frame affects voters; whether it mobilizes and informs voters, or whether it leads to cynicism and disengagement.

    Communica-ng with and Rela-ng to Social Robots: Alice Meets Leolani
    Prof. Dr P.T.J.M. Vossen (VU), Prof. Dr E.A. Konijn (VU) and Prof. Dr J.F. Hoorn (VU)
    To optimize human-robot communication, the pragmatic-semantic aspects of understanding natural language are connected to the mechanisms of social-affective bonding with robots. Put simply, what
    is needed from a robot conversationally for people to become friends with an artificial other? This results in blueprints for effective and personalized robot communication scenarios.

    Rethinking news algorithms: nudging users towards diverse news exposure
    Dr W.H. van Atteveldt (VU), Dr A.S. Fokkens (VU) and Prof. Dr N. Helberger (UvA)
    We improve news algorithms to stimulate people to read more diverse news. Algorithms such as used by Facebook and Google can unwittingly trap people in a “filter bubble”. Nudging people to read about more topics and perspectives makes them more aware of issues facing the country.

    Look Who’s Talking: Towards Engaging Long-Term Interactions with Conversational Agents
    Prof. Dr E.J. Krahmer (UvT), Dr G.-J. de Bruijn (UvA), Prof. Dr T. Bosse (RU), Prof. Dr M.L. Antheunis (UT), Dr W.F.G. Haselager (RU) and Prof. Dr R.W. Wiers (UvA)
    Trying to change a person’s health behaviour (stop smoking, have safe sex) is difficult. Digital conversational agents (chatbots) have huge potential for this. Based on recent insights from (computational) social sciences and humanities, we develop and test a new generation of chatbots which can engage in long-term motivational interactions.

    The platformization of the global sex industry: Markets, morals, and mass intimacy
    Prof. Dr O.J.M. Velthuis (UvA) and Dr T. Poell (UvA)
    This project studies the spectacular rise of webcam sex platforms, such as Chaturbate, Cams.com or Myfreecams. What is the impact of platformization on competition within this industry? Which risks and opportunities does webcamming create for sex workers? Are there reasons for better regulation of these platforms?

    “Empowering Human Intentions through Artificial Intelligence”
    Prof. Dr Ir J.M. Broersen (UU) and Prof. Dr H. Aarts (UU)
    Everyone is familiar with the tension between habits (smoking, gaming, etc.) and intentions to change one’s behaviour. Our research analyses the relation between intentions and habits. It uses the results on which habits strengthen or undermine the realization of certain intentions to development a form of AI that strengthens one’s personal autonomy.

    RAIDIO - Responsible Artificial Intelligence in clinical DecisIOn-making
    Prof. Dr A.L. Bredenoord (UMCU) and Prof. Dr S.M.E. Wyatt (UM)
    AI changes medical practice. AI augmented decision-making processes are being implemented, yet ethical guidance for the responsible development and use of AI in medicine is still lacking. This research analyses the digital transition in image-based medicine and ethically evaluates the role of AI in clinical decision-making.

    The Bias Barometer
    Dr K. Schulz (UvA) and Dr L. van Maanen (UvA)
    The team studies the relationship between stereotypes (“Scientists are dull”) in media and the development of implicit biases by media consumers. As a case study we will analyse coverage of the US presidential elections in 2020 on various media (e.g., CNN, Fox), and how these cause different implicit biases.

  • Granted projects 2018

    View the news item: 'Grants NWO Open Competition – SSH'

    Prison and Autonomy: Implicit psychological markers of the sense of agency in detention
    Prof. dr. Henk Aarts (UU)
    Life in prison inevitably limits one’s autonomy. These limitations can have unintended negative side effects on the self-reliance of offenders, which indirectly may contribute to an increased risk of reoffending. Using an innovative social-neurocognitive approach, this study examines the psychological basis for this relationship between autonomy and self-reliance.

    Physiostracism: Using Physiology to Predict Prosocial and Antisocial Responses to Ostracism
    Prof. dr. Ilja van Beest (UvT)
    Reactions to ostracism unfold over time. First, people experience social pain. Second, people cope by either acting in a prosocial or antisocial way. This research addresses the puzzle of how it is possible that social pain can give rise to these opposite coping behaviors.

    TransLatin: The Transnational Impact of Latin Theatre from the Early Modern Netherlands, A Qualitative and Computational Analysis
    Prof. dr. J. Bloemendal (KNAW/Huygens)
    In the Renaissance period and beyond literature crossed borders, and especially playwrights from several countries influenced each other because their plays, especially Latin ones, were read and staged everywhere. In this process, the Low Countries were important. This project investigates how this happened with historical research and modern computational techniques.

    Generational differences in determinants of party choice
    Prof. dr. Wouter van der Brug (UvA)
    We investigate generational differences in determinants of party choice. We expect that 'new political issues', such as migration and global warming, have the greatest impact on vote choices of young generations. Among other things, this explains why young people are overrepresented among the supporters of Green and Radical right parties.

    Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Predicting Peer Relationships in Emerging Adulthood
    Prof. dr. Toon Cillessen (RU)
    This project examines young adults’ relationships with peers at school, work, in friendships and in love, and online. How do these relationships impact their health and well-being? How do young adults collaborate and solve problems with each other? And how is this related to their behavior as children and adolescents?

    Coping with drought. An environmental history of drinking water shortages and climate adaptation in the Netherlands, 1550-1850
    Prof. dr. Petra van Dam (VU)
    Worldwide human-induced climate change may lead to shortages of drinking water. In the past smaller climate changes also caused drought. This environmental history project investigates how humans adapted to water scarcity in periods of drought in the Netherlands from 1550 to 1850.

    Beyond a fear of death: Exploring the terror management potential of eudaimonic entertainment
    Prof. dr. Enny Das (RU)
    Humans avoid thinking about death. Death is man’s biggest fear. Paradoxically, they are drawn to movies that feature death and tragedy. This proposal examines if humans use tragic entertainment to temporarily escape their fear of death, or to accept and rise above it.

    Deterrence versus procedural justice. Successfully reducing reoffending
    Dr. Anja Dirkzwager (Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, NSCR)
    Criminal Justice Systems generally assume that offenders reoffend less if they (a) perceive sentences as (more) severe, and (b) feel they are treated (more) fair and respectful. Surprisingly, the validity of both assumptions is never tested adequately. This project does examine these assumptions adequately among prisoners using a longitudinal design.

    Better choices for better long-term care
    Prof. dr. Eddy van Doorslaer (EUR)
    Are the elderly better off with care at home or in a nursing home? Does it matter which provider they choose? And why? We answer these questions by analysing recent policy reforms. The results help the elderly and policymakers to make choose how to spend the long-term care budget.

    SPIN-OUT: Predicting and preventing a SPiral of mutually reINforcing negative OUTgroup attitudes (spin-out) in multi-ethnic classrooms
    Prof. dr. Andreas Flache (RUG)
    Increasing ethnic diversity of society raises concerns that a vicious cycle may arise in which negative attitudes about outgroups mutually reinforce each other. SPIN-OUT studies this with computer simulations and data from ethnically diverse classrooms. Aim is to propose school policies that could help to prevent vicious cycles.

    Assessing the Transformative Effects of Transparency in Global Governance: The Case of Climate Change
    Dr. Aarti Gupta (WUR)
    The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement calls for ever greater transparency from countries about their voluntary climate actions. Such transparency is assumed to facilitate greater accountability and trust between countries, thereby stimulating ambitious climate action. Yet does transparency generate such transformative effects and under what conditions? TRANSGOV addresses this urgent question.

    Project website: https://trans-gov.org/
    Twitter: @transgov_wur

    Tolerant migrant cities? The case of Holland 1600-1900
    Prof. dr. Manon van der Heijden (UL) & prof. dr. Leo Lucassen (IISG/OGC)
    The Netherlands are the prime example of tolerance. Didn’t we welcome many migrants in the Golden Age without significant conflicts? However, we know little about the position of migrants before the courts and conflicts between migrants and natives between 1600-1900. This project will challenge the image of Dutch tolerance.

    Efficient methods for decision problems with economy of scales in costs
    Prof. dr. ir. Dick den Hertog (UvT)
    Several supply‐chain costs components (and many other applications) have economies‐of‐scale (EoS): e.g., inventory costs per unit are lower when the inventory is higher. EoS leads to hard mathematical optimization problems. This project develops new optimization techniques for large‐scale problems with EoS, with application to World Food Programme’s supply‐chain.

    Explaining longitudinal patterns of corporate misconduct in major hazard corporations
    Prof. dr. mr. Wim Huisman (VU)
    Violations of safety regulations by chemical corporations can have devastating consequences. Knowledge on offending patterns and underlying causes would greatly benefit controlling agencies in allocating their limited resources. This study will analyse longitudinal patterns of safety regulation violations and will explain differences in these patterns among corporations.

    Is AI outsmarting us? The impact of AI on knowledge
    Prof. dr. Marleen Huysman (VU)
    Because AI technologies become more autonomous from the knowledge domains for which they are designed, there is a risk of AI undermining human expertise. We follow AI from development in the lab to its use on the work floor to develop a collaborative methodology for augmenting knowledge work with.

    Fear and avoidance in Anorexia Nervosa
    Prof. dr. Anita Jansen (UM)
    Anorexia nervosa is a very serious mental illness and treatments are in general not very successful. More insight in the acquisition, avoidance and extinction of anxiety in patients with anorexia nervosa might pave the way for better treatments.

    The burden of infectious diseases. Child and adult mortality from infectious diseases in Amsterdam, 1854-1926
    Prof. dr. Angelique Janssens (RU) & prof. dr. Jacco Wallinga (LUMC)
    Which diseases were roaming the city of Amsterdam between 1854 and 1926? In this period quite some progress was made in mortality from infectious diseases. In this project we reveal how this was achieved and which groups were benefitting the most.

    A Place to Grow Old? The Risks and Rewards of Retirement Migration
    Prof. dr. Matthijs Kalmijn (UvA)
    Emigrating in later life is a step that more and more people consider. A different climate and culture make this step attractive as well as risky. In this project we examine how Dutch natives settle down in Southern European countries, how they integrate and try to achieve the good life.

    The Rhythm of Relating: How Emotional Sharing Emerges From Interpersonal Synchrony in Movement, Physiological and Neural Activations
    Prof. dr. Sander Koole (VU)
    When people share their emotions, they often display the same rhythms in movements, heart rate, and even brain activity. This project investigates how such synchronous rhythms contribute to emotion regulation. The results may contribute to making psychotherapy more effective and improve communication, for instance, in close relationships or during negotiations.

    Neurobiologische mechanismen van beat perceptie
    Prof. dr. Sonja Kotz (UM) - Motor-auditory oscillatory coupling in human beat and rhythm perception
    In het voorgestelde onderzoeksproject willen we de hypothese onderzoeken dat interactie tussen motorische- en auditieve hersensystemen essentieel is voor muzikale ‘beat’ perceptie. Dit heeft mogelijke implicaties voor taalontwikkeling. Verder willen we kijken hoe een nieuw ritmisch percept ontstaat in het brein en wat de invloed van o.a. het hartritme hierop is.

    Transformations to sustainable food production in the Brazilian Cerrado: The cultural politics and potential of scaling up biodiversity-sustaining agriculture
    Dr. Myanna Lahsen (WUR)
    Analyzing material, informational, political and socio-cultural factors encouraging different agricultural production systems, this research aims to identify opportunities and challenges for scaling up more sustainable approaches to agricultural production. This knowledge will guide the co-creation of desired trajectories towards sustainability-aligned scenarios in the Brazilian savannah.

    Colonial Normativity. Corruption and difference in colonial and postcolonial histories of empire and nations
    Prof. dr. Susan Legêne (VU)
    Contemporary corruption is often linked to the history of colonial state formation, but how they relate has never systematically been researched. This programme compares the role of corruption in Dutch and Indonesian histories of state-formation with a focus on intersecting moments of entanglement around 1900, 1945 and 1970.

    Explaining differences in union dissolution between municipalities: the role of compositional, contextual and cross-level effects
    Prof. dr. Aat  Liefbroer (NIDI)
    Divorce risks differ strongly by municipality. In Urk, the divorce risk is five times lower than in Heerlen. In this study, the reasons for this difference are examined. Is it due to the people? Is it due to the circumstances in a municipality? Or a combination of both?

    Dynamic clustering for business model identification and financial stability
    Prof. dr. André Lucas (VU)
    Do external pressures by non‐standard central bank policies (prolonged low interest rates, abundant liquidity, bond buying) lead financial firms to adopt more similar business models and increase the fragility of the financial system? This project develops new statistical tools to answer this, allowing for the environment to change and banks to react.

    Unravelling East Africa’s Early Linguistic History
    Prof. dr. Maarten Mous (UL)
    This project comprises the linguistic history of the crucial language groups in East Africa and a search for words that indicate earlier lost languages with the aim of combining the outcomes with recent archaeological and genetic research in order to gain insight into the early history of East Africa.

    A sentence uttered makes a world appear
    Dr. Reinhard Muskens (UvA)
    Hearing a sentence enables one to make a mental picture of its content. ‘The cat is on the mat’ is a sequence of words first and then an image. But how does that work? Our research uses logic and computation to answer this question.

    Safeguarding the effectiveness of the judiciary’s role in legal regime for the oceans: charting a course between judicial restraint and judicial activism
    Prof. dr. Alex Oude Elferink (UU)
    Courts in principle are only entitled to settle disputes with the consent of the States concerned. This may significantly limit recourse to courts under the UN Law of the Sea Convention. Many disputes are also concerned with other legal rules. The present project assesses how to effectively address this matter.

    The different costs of motherhood
    Prof. dr. Erik Plug (UvA)
    We exploit natural experiments to explore different costs and benefits of motherhood through four open questions. (i) Is there a penalty to anticipated motherhood? (ii) Does the motherhood penalty vary by the mother’s sexual orientation? (iii) Are there marriage-market benefits to motherhood? (iv) Are there intergenerational benefits to (good) motherhood?

    The Beginning of Dutch Animal Husbandry: Chronology, Nature, and Impact
    Prof. dr. Daan Raemaekers (RUG)
    The start of animal husbandry is of major importance for the culture and natural environment of Europe. This project studies the start of animal husbandry in the Netherlands using various new techniques. This will lead to a better understanding of the way in which prehistoric people interacted with their livestock.

    A targeted imaging-metabolomics approach to classify harms of novel psychoactive substances (NPS)
    Prof. dr. Johannes Ramaekers (UM)
    NPS are non-scheduled drugs (‘legal highs’) that mimic the effects of traditional drugs of abuse. NPS threaten public health because health risk evaluations are slow. Here we propose a targeted imaging metabolomics approach in humans that allows fast classification and prediction of the impact of NPS on brain function.

    Speak without talking
    Prof. dr. Nicolas Ramsey (UMC)
    For people who cannot talk due to paralysis, an alternative means of communication is important. In this project it is investigated whether overt or covert spoken words can be read directly from the brain. The findings can contribute to the development of brain implants that convert brain signals to speech.

    Why we believe that sharks are dangerous
    Dr. ing. Robert van Rooij (UvA)
    We accept generic sentences like ‘Sharks are dangerous’, although sharks only seldomly attack us. It is important to understand why, because stereotypes are also expressed by such generic sentences. We  want to investigate whether the acceptance of such generalizing sentences can be explained by the way  expectations are learned.

    Decoding Descartes
    Prof. dr. Han van Ruler (EUR)
    Decoding Descartes unravels the ideas of the founder of modern philosophy and science René Descartes (1596–1650) in response to contemporary deadlocks in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. By reevaluating Descartes' work and correspondence, the project shows Descartes is still decisively relevant for contemporary debates in multiple disciplines from humanities to neuroscience.

    Health and disease as practical concepts: a pragmatist approach to conceptualization of health and disease
    Prof. dr. Maartje Schermer (ErasmusMC)
    Scientific, technological and societal developments affect the way we understand health and disease. These concepts mean different things for different stakeholders, and in different contexts. This project develops a new, pragmatic approach to defining ‘health’ and ‘disease’, taking into account the function of these concepts in various health-related practices.

    A New Normative Framework for Financial Debt
    Prof. dr. Eric Schliesser (UvA)
    Society is drowning in financial debts. But it is unclear how to deal with debt morally when it cannot be repaid or causes harmful side effects. This project develops practical, normative guidelines that help policymakers, creditors, and debtors to regulate and manage debt.

    Spread the new(s). Understanding standardization of Dutch through 17th-century newspapers
    Prof. dr. Nicolien van der Sijs (Meertens)
    How were the norms and rules for Standard Dutch evolving in the 17th century disseminated and how did they become generally accepted? Our project investigates these questions on the basis of a 17th century newspaper corpus of 17 million words that has recently become available through crowdsourcing.

    Claim Making as Rights Making: Irregular Migrants Reshaping International Human Rights Law
    Prof. mr. T.P. Spijkerboer (VU)
    Bringing together political theory on rights-claiming with international human rights law (IHRL) in an empirical legal study, this project maps the role irregular migrants play in developing IHRL through their formal and informal IHRL claims.

    The creative public servant: observations, explanations and consequences
    Prof. dr. Sandra van Thiel (RU)
    Executive agencies are expected to be creative and innovative, to improve service delivery to citizens. However, creativity is not always possible or considered desirable in a public sector context, as regulations must be obeyed. How can public servants be/become creative, and when does it lead to innovations?

    The Return of the Medici? The Global Rise of Private Museums for Contemporary Art
    Dr. Olav Velthuis (UvA)
    Art worlds have recently witnessed the global rise of private art museums. This project explains this rise and studies its multifaceted impact: what do private museums add to existing museum scenes? To what extent do they now co-determine the value of contemporary art?

    Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture: the role of emissions trading
    Prof. dr. Jonathan Verschuuren (TU)
    The Paris Climate Agreement goals can only be achieved when greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are reduced and more carbon is sequestered on agricultural lands. This project researches how agricultural emissions can be included in the EU Emissions Trading System, in part through a comparative study with other countries.

    Contested Belonging: The Meanings of ‘Home’ for Arab LGBT Refugees in Amsterdam
    Prof. dr. Berteke Waaldijk (UU)
    Arab LGBT refugees in Amsterdam may feel forced to choose between two incompatible ‘homes’ with supposedly opposing cultures: a progressive European culture and a traditional Arab culture. Yet, very little is known about their real-life experiences of ‘homes’. Can we learn anew from them what ‘feeling at home’ may mean?