ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

This research proposal explores the political economy of international development assistance (aid) directed towards social expenditures, examined through the lens of a particular financial quandary that has been ignored in the literature despite having important economic and political repercussions. The quandary is that aid cannot be directly spent on expenditures denominated in domestic currency. Instead, aid needs to be first converted into domestic currency whereas the foreign exchange provided is used for other purposes, resulting in a process prone to complex politics regarding domestic monetary policy and spending commitments. The implications require a serious rethink of many of the accepted premises in the political economy of aid and related literatures. It is urgent to engage in this rethinking given tensions between two dynamics in the current global political economy: a tightening financial cycle facing developing countries versus an increasing emphasis in international development agendas of directing aid towards social expenditures. The financial quandary might exacerbate these tensions, restricting recipient government policy space despite donor commitments of respecting national ownership. The proposed research examines these implications through the emerging social protection agenda among donors, which serves as an ideal policy case given that social protection expenditures are almost entirely based on domestic currency. This will be researched through a mixed-method comparative case study of six developing countries, combining quantitative analysis of balance of payments and financing constraints with qualitative process tracing based on elite interviews and documentary research. The objective is to re-orient our thinking on these issues for a deeper appreciation of the systemic political and economic challenges facing global redistribution towards poorer countries, particularly with respect to the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals.

1 459 529 €

Start date: 2015-05-01, End date: 2020-04-30

In most European countries social insurance programs, like welfare, unemployment insurance and disability insurance are characterized by low reemployment rates. Therefore, governments spend huge amounts of money on active labour market programs, which should help individuals in finding work. Recent surveys indicate that programs which aim at intensifying job search behaviour are much more effective than schooling programs for improving human capital. A second conclusion from these surveys is that despite the size of the spendings on these programs, evidence on its effectiveness is limited. This research proposal aims at developing an economic framework that will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of popular programs like offering reemployment bonuses, fraud detection, workfare and job search monitoring. The main innovation is that I will combine economic theory with recently developed econometric techniques and detailed administrative data sets, which have not been explored before. While most of the literature only focuses on short-term outcomes, the available data allow me to also consider the long-term effectiveness of programs. The key advantage of an economic model is that I can compare the effectiveness of the different programs, consider modifications of programs and combinations of programs. Furthermore, using an economic model I can construct profiling measures to improve the targeting of programs to subsamples of the population. This is particularly relevant if the effectiveness of programs differs between individuals or depends on the moment in time the program is offered. Therefore, the results from this research will not only be of scientific interest, but will also be of great value to policymakers.

550 000 €

Start date: 2008-07-01, End date: 2013-06-30

This project has the potential to radically change current understanding of cultic and social transformation in the post-exilic temple community of Jerusalem (c. 6th-4th centuries BCE), an important formative phase of ancient Judaism. “BABYLON” draws on recent, ground-breaking advances in the study of cuneiform texts to illuminate the Babylonian environment of the Judean exile, the socio-historical context which gave rise to the transformative era in Second Temple Judaism. In particular, these new data show that the parallels between Babylonian and post-exilic forms of cultic and social organization were substantially more far-reaching than presently recognized in Biblical scholarship. “BABYLON” will study the extent of these similarities and explore the question how Babylonian models could have influenced the restoration effort in Jerusalem. This goal will be achieved through four sub-projects. P1 will study the social dynamics and intellectual universe of the Babylonian priesthood. P2 will finalize the publication of cuneiform archives of Babylonian priests living in the time of the exile. P3 will identify the exact areas of change in the post-exilic temple community of Jerusalem. P4, the synthesis, will draw from each of these sub-projects to present a comparative study of the Second Temple and contemporary Babylonian models of cultic and social organization, and to propose a strategy of research into the possible routes of transmission between Babylonia and Jerusalem. The research will be carried out by three team members: the PI (P1 and P4), a PhD in Assyriology (P2) and a post-doctoral researcher in Biblical Studies specialized in the Second Temple period (P3 and P4). The participation of the wider academic community will be invited at two moments in the course of the project, in the form of a workshop and an international conference. “BABYLON” will adopt an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together Assyriologists and Biblical scholars for a much-needed dialogue, thereby exploding the artificial boundaries that currently exist in the academic landscape between these two fields.

1 200 000 €

Start date: 2009-09-01, End date: 2015-08-31

Subjective data play an increasing role in modern economics. For instance, new welfare measurements are based on people’s subjective assessments of their happiness or their life satisfaction. A problem of such measurements is that people have no incentives to tell the truth. To solve this problem and make those measurements incentive compatible, I will introduce a new market institution, called Bayesian markets. Imagine we ask people whether they are happy with their life. On Bayesian markets, they will trade an asset whose value is the proportion of people answering Yes. Only those answering Yes will have the right to buy the asset and those answering No the right to sell it. Bayesian updating implies that “Yes” agents predict a higher value of the asset than “No” agents do and, consequently, “Yes” agents want to buy it while “No” agents want to sell it. I will show that truth-telling is then the optimal strategy. Bayesian markets reward truth-telling the same way as prediction markets (betting markets) reward people for reporting their true subjective probabilities about observable events. Yet, unlike prediction markets, they do not require events to be objectively observable. Bayesian markets apply to any type of unverifiable truths, from one’s own happiness to beliefs about events that will never be observed. The present research program will first establish the theoretical foundations of Bayesian markets. It will then develop the proper methodology to implement them. Finally, it will disseminate the use of Bayesian markets via applications. The first application will demonstrate how degrees of expertise can be measured and will apply it to risks related to climate change and nuclear power plants. It will contribute to the political debate by shedding new light on what true experts think about these risks. The second application will provide the first incentivized measures of life satisfaction and happiness.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31

"This proposal outlines projects to develop robust and portable theories studying the impact of psychological phenomena in economic settings. The proposed work falls in three broad research agendas. My first main agenda is to formally model and economically apply a simple observation: that when people make decisions, they do not focus equally on all attributes of their available options, and overweight the attributes they focus on. I will build a set of portable models of focusing in attribute-based choice and risky choice based on the idea that a person focuses more on attributes in which her options differ more. I will also use the framework to develop novel, focus-based, theories of intertemporal choice and social preferences, as well as analyze the implications of focusing for product design, principal-agent relationships, and other economic questions. My second main agenda is to explore some implications for market outcomes, welfare, and policy of the possibility that consumers misperceive certain aspects of products. I will investigate the circumstances that facilitate the profitable deception of consumers; firms' incentives for ""innovating"" deceptive products, including novel financial products aimed at exploiting investors; how firms' ability to distinguish naive and sophisticated consumers affects the consequences of deception; whether learning on the part of consumers will help them to avoid making mistakes; and how regulators and other observers can detect consumer mistakes from market data. Two further projects apply the model of reference-dependent utility I have developed in earlier work to understand the pricing and advertising behavior of firms. I will also aim to disseminate some of my work, along with other cutting-edge research in psychology and economics, in a Journal of Economic Literature survey on ""Behavioral Contract Theory."""

1 275 448 €

Start date: 2012-11-01, End date: 2018-10-31

Recent advances in cryptography yielded the blockchain technology, which enables a radically new and decentralized method to maintain authoritative records, without the need of trusted intermediaries. Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency blockchain application has already demonstrated that it is possible to operate a purely cryptography-based, global, distributed, decentralized, anonymous financial network, independent from central and commercial banks, regulators and the state. The same technology is now being applied to other social domains (e.g. public registries of ownership and deeds, voting systems, the internet domain name registry). But research on the societal impact of blockchain innovation is scant, and we cannot properly assess its risks and promises. In addition, crucial knowledge is missing on how blockchain technologies can and should be regulated by law. The BlockchainSociety project focuses on three research questions. (1) What internal factors contribute to the success of a blockchain application? (2) How does society adopt blockchain? (3) How to regulate blockchain? It breaks new ground as it (1) maps the most important blockchain projects, their governance, and assesses their disruptive potential; (2) documents and analyses the social diffusion of the technology, and builds scenarios about the potential impact of blockchain diffusion; and (3) it creates an inventory of emerging policy responses, compares and assesses policy tools in terms of efficiency and impact. The project will (1) build the conceptual and methodological bridges between information law, the study of the self-governance of technological systems via Science and Technology Studies, and the study of collective control efforts of complex socio-technological assemblages via Internet Governance studies; (2) address the most pressing blockchain-specific regulatory challenges via the analysis of emerging policies, and the development of new proposals.

1 499 631 €

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

Damage to parietal cortex after stroke causes patients to become unaware of large parts of their surroundings and body parts. This so-called spatial neglect is hypothesised to be brought about by a stroke-induced imbalance between the left and right hemisphere. Some patients experience a partial recovery of lost abilities, but the factors that drive this rebalancing are unknown. The research proposed here will overcome this bottleneck in our understanding of the brain recovery phenomenon, and develop therapeutic approaches that for the first time will control, steer and speed up brain rebalancing after stroke. To that goal, we introduce a revolutionary approach in which TMS, fMRI, and EEG are applied simultaneously in healthy human volunteers to artificially unbalance the brain, and then study and control processes of rebalancing. Because we are one of the few groups worldwide that has accomplished this methodology, and that has the expertise to fully analyse the data it will yield, we are in a unique position to deliver both fundamental insights into brain plasticity, and derived new therapies. In brief, we will use TMS to (i) mimic spatial neglect in healthy volunteers while simultaneously monitoring the underlying neural network effects using fMRI/EEG, and to (ii) determine which exact brain reorganisation leads to an optimal behavioral recovery after injury. Importantly, we will use cutting-edge fMRI pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms to predict which concrete TMS treatment will specifically support this optimal functional reorganisation in the unbalanced brain. Finally, we will directly translate these fundamental findings into clinical practise and apply novel TMS protocols to rebalance the brain in patients suffering from parietal stroke.

1 344 853 €

Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-03-31

Thanks to the recent advances in mapping brain activation during task performance using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (i.e., studying the brain in action), it is now possible to study one of the oldest questions in psychology: how the development of neural circuitry underlies the development of cognition and emotion. The ‘Storm and Stress’ of adolescence, a period during which adolescents develop cognitively with great speed but are also risk-takers and sensitive to opinions of their peer group, has puzzled scientists for centuries. New technologies of brain mapping have the potential to shed new light on the mystery of adolescence. The approach proposed here concerns the investigation of brain regions which underlie developmental changes in cognitive, emotional and social-emotional functions over the course of child and adolescent development. For this purpose I will measure functional brain development longitudinally across the age range 8-20 years by using a combined cross-sectional longitudinal design including 240 participants. Participants will take part in two testing sessions over a four-year-period in order to track the within-subject time courses of functional brain development for cognitive, emotional and social-emotional functions and to understand how these functions develop relative to each other in the same individuals, using multilevel models for change. The cross-sectional longitudinal assessment of cognitive, emotional and social-emotional functional brain development in relation to brain structure and hormone levels is unique in the international field and has the potential to provide new explanations for old questions. The application of brain mapping combined with multilevel models for change is original, and allows for the examination of developmental trajectories rather than age comparisons. An integrative mapping (i.e., combined with task performance and with biological markers) of functional brain development is important not only for theory development, but also for understanding how children learn new tasks and participate in a complex social world, and eventually to tailor educational programs to the needs of children.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2011-02-01, End date: 2016-01-31

The emergence of participatory governance has resulted in the delegation of governmental responsibilities to citizens. Individuals position themselves as voluntary mediators, or brokers, between the government and their fellow citizens. This research asks: what are the roles of such brokers in participatory urban governance, and how do they influence democratic governance? This study will investigate ethnographically how brokers position themselves in administrative schemes, and examine the formal and informal dimensions of their performance. It will analyse the practices, discourses and networks, both in and out of officially sanctioned channels and government institutions. The research approaches brokers as ‘assemblers’, connective agents who actively bring together different governmental and citizen actors, institutions and resources. The scholarly debate on brokerage within participatory governance is divided into two different arguments: first, an argument about neoliberal deregulation located in the Global North, which encourages the practices of active citizen-mediators, and second, a modernization argument in the Global South, which sees brokers as remnants of a clientelist political system. This research will combine these arguments to study settings in both the North and the South. It employs a comparative urbanism design to study four cities that are recognized as pioneers in democratic participatory governance, two in the North and two in the South: Rotterdam (NL), Manchester (UK), Cochabamba (Bolivia) and Recife (Brazil). This research builds upon theories from political anthropology, urban studies, citizenship studies and public administration to develop a new framework for analysing brokerage in participatory urban governance. Understanding how the formal and informal dimensions of participatory governance are entwined will contribute to our ability to theorize the conditions under which this type of governance can give rise to more democratic cities.

1 497 570 €

Start date: 2016-08-01, End date: 2021-07-31

This project focuses on the appropriation of the Old Testament by early Christian interpreters of the Bible. A historical approach, not commonly adopted in the study of biblical interpretation, will enable us to study how this process contributed to the formation of distinctive Christian identities within the multicultural society of the late Roman principate and early Byzantine rule. The exegetes of this period were to a great extent responsible for the creation of a distinctive, sophisticated, and uncompromising discourse—a ‘totalising Christian discourse’, which determines Christian identities up to this day. In two projects, carried out by three researchers, we will make cross sections of the relevant material. It was allegorizing interpretation that enabled exegetes belonging to the so-called School of Alexandria to recognize Christ everywhere in the Old Testament, and thus to appropriate it and make it useful to the Church. Thus the Song of Songs was no longer considered an earthly love song, but was said to describe Christ’s love for the Church. Exegetes associated with the School of Antioch opposed to this kind of approach. They are often described as literalists. The traditional understanding of the distinctions between the two schools needs to be broadened and corrected by a picture of the actual practice of their hermeneutics. In my view the Antiochene opposition was brought about by the fact that pagan and ‘heretic’ critics did not accept the Alexandrian use of allegory. My innovative hypothesis is related to the central role played by the letters of the apostle Paul in the Antiochene reaction against Alexandria. For the Antiochenes, the use of Paul became an alternative means to bridge the gap between the two Testaments. Instead of a book in which every jot and tittle referred to Christ through allegory, the Antiochenes came to view the Old Testament as an amalgamation of moral lessons that agreed with Paul's teaching.

655 309 €

Start date: 2008-09-01, End date: 2013-12-31

The water cycle in the Himalaya is poorly understood because of its extreme topography that results in complex interactions between climate and water stored in snow and glaciers. Hydrological extremes in the greater Himalayas regularly cause great damage, e.g. the Pakistan floods in 2010, while the Himalayas also supply water to over 25% of the global population. So, the stakes are high and an accurate understanding of the Himalayan water cycle is imperative. The discovery of the monumental error on the future of the Himalayan glaciers in the fourth assessment report of the IPCC is exemplary for the scientific misconceptions which are associated to the Himalayan glaciers and its water supplying function. The underlying reason is the huge scale gap that exists between studies for individual glaciers that are not representative of the entire region and hydrological modelling studies that represent the variability in Himalayan climates. In CAT, I will bridge this knowledge gap and explain spatial differences in Himalayan glacio-hydrology at an unprecedented level of detail by combining high-altitude observations, the latest remote sensing technology and state-of-the-art atmospheric and hydrological models. I will generate a high-altitude meteorological observations and will employ drones to monitor glacier dynamics. The data will be used to parameterize key processes in hydro-meteorological models such as cloud resolving mechanisms, glacier dynamics and the ice and snow energy balance. The results will be integrated into atmospheric and glacio-hyrological models for two representative, but contrasting catchments using in combination with the systematic inclusion of the newly developed algorithms. CAT will unambiguously reveal spatial differences in Himalayan glacio-hydrology necessary to project future changes in water availability and extreme events. As such, CAT may provide the scientific base for climate change adaptation policies in this vulnerable region.

1 499 631 €

Start date: 2016-02-01, End date: 2021-01-31

Coherence of law is created in the writings of legal scholars who systematize rules and principles of law. Their pursuit of coherence is vital for the effectiveness of legal systems. However, coherence of law has almost not been analysed in a systematic, empirical way. The project will therefore develop a methodology that will address coherence across forms (‘sources’) of law (legislation, legal scholarship, case law, customs), across themes (e.g. criminal law and contracts) and across authors, and which will additionally encompass interaction with societal demand and contextual factors. The methodology will be ground-breaking because it will disentangle the concept of coherence into measurable modes of interconnectedness, weighing them together so as to assess (in)coherence at the level of the legal system. This methodology will constitute a stepping stone for a new field of dynamic coherence of law created through legal scholarship that will ultimately improve the quality of law. It will be founded on academic writings on law from the early modern period (ca. 1500 - ca. 1800) that concern the theme of collateral rights, that is, those rights facilitating expropriation of the assets of debtors in case of their default. Indications are that the impact of rules on collateral rights hinged on coherence as established in legal writings, and that in the period mentioned legal coherence for this theme was increasing. Coherence in development will be traced in the interpretations of legal scholars following on from interactions between scholarly writings, local law (bylaws, judgments) and commercial practice (contracts). Connections of rules and principles found will be presented in frames of analysis that cluster them along variables of context, time and source of law. The combination of legal analysis with a broad scope of coherence (cross-source, context-driven) will build bridges across gaps now existing between the different disciplines that study law.

1 495 625 €

Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31

For decades the cognitive neuroscience community has expended significant effort identifying system-level neural correlates of human consciousness, broad neural signatures that distinguish conscious from unconscious processes at the level of whole brain regions. Meanwhile, within the field of neurobiology, rapid progress has been made in understanding the neurotransmitter systems underlying basic sensory processes (e.g. in mice, monkeys). This research has, however, been performed in relative isolation from studies of human consciousness, and clear opportunities to link the two levels of description remain largely unexplored. Here I will establish this link by combining state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques with pharmacological interventions. First, I will validate and refine existing theories of consciousness by isolating system-level neural correlates of consciousness that are invariant across experimental tasks and manipulations. Second, I will test the hypothesis that NMDA receptors play a crucial role in recurrent processing, the dynamic information exchange between brain regions, thought to give rise to consciousness. I will also test the hypothesis that rapid fluctuations in spontaneous network activity (modulating arousal levels), which are controlled by noradrenaline and acetylcholine neuromodulatory systems, determine the likelihood of sensory evoked recurrent processing, and hence consciousness, to occur. Third, I will test the hypothesis that recurrent processing provides the possibility for prolonged and flexible information processing, which could represent a potential function of consciousness. In summary, the proposed research has the potential to gain fundamental insights in the neural causes, rather than simply correlates, of human consciousness, as has been the focus of most previous work. In so doing, the work will advance scientific understanding of the long-debated functional significance of consciousness for human cognition and behavior.

1 499 766 €

Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-04-30

Everything occurs in a context. We see a car in the context of a street scene and a stove in the context of a kitchen. Context greatly helps the processing of individual objects. Surprisingly however, context hardly plays a role in most models of visual perception, which treat perception as a largely bottom-up categorization process. In this research proposal, I will examine how context changes the cortical computations that give rise to visual perception, focusing on contextual modulations in space and time. Moreover, I will translate this research to a clinical condition that is marked by aberrant context modulations in perception. Firstly, I will examine the influence of spatial context from the surround on cortical processing of individual elements. I aim to uncover the neural mechanisms responsible for the contextual facilitation of features and objects. I hypothesize that spatial context constrains sensory input by changing sensory representations at earlier stages in line with expectations at higher-order stages of perceptual analysis. Secondly, I will examine the influence of temporal context from past history. I hypothesize that temporal contexts trigger cortical waves of neural ‘preplay’ activity, setting up time-varying templates of expected incoming visual input. Thirdly, I will test the clinical significance of this framework to understand perceptual atypicalities in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I will empirically test the hypothesis that ASD is marked by deficient processing of contextual information, in both the spatial and temporal domain. This integrative approach has the potential to significantly advance theoretical models of perception, based on underlying neurobiology, and underline the importance of context for understanding perception. Moreover, the knowledge gleaned can have significant societal and clinical impact.

1 499 421 €

Start date: 2016-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31

Many daily decisions are made through quick evaluations of another’s trustworthiness, especially when they involve strangers. Individuals rely on a partner’s tractable characteristics, including expressions of emotion. These are readily mimicked even down to the physiological level. I here propose to investigate which forms of mimicry are empathic and inform decisions of trust and distrust. The mimicry-empathy linkage has come under discussion with the publication of counter-examples in biology and failures of replication in psychology, making the question of what mimicry entails even more important. The key role emotional expressions play in our daily life positions this revived debate around mimicry at the forefront of emotion science. Scientific advancement in this field, however, demands a completely new theoretical and methodological approach. Therefore, I will place mimicry within the Tinbergian framework. Fundamentally, this means that I will incorporate biological and psychological approaches to the study of mimicry and during dyadic interactions, investigate different forms of mimicry simultaneously, e.g. facial mimicry, contagious blushing, pupil mimicry, and their 1) Function: what they are good for. Using economic games, I will study which mimicry forms are related to empathy and inform social decisions; 2) Mechanism: how they operate on the neurophysiological level; 3) Development: how mimicry develops over the lifespan and which mimicry forms are phylogenetically continuous and shared with the bonobo, our closest living relative and link to our last common ancestor. For the first time, humans and bonobos will be directly compared on the basis of their mimicry and trust. This comparison can revolutionize the way humans perceive themselves when it comes to prosocial behaviour.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2019-06-01, End date: 2024-05-31

For many years, human cooperation has been praised as beneficial in organizational and personal settings. Indeed, cooperation allows people to develop trust, build meaningful relationships, achieve mutually beneficial outcomes, and strengthen bonding with one's group members. However, while the benefits of cooperation are clear, very little is known about its possible negative aspects. Such negative aspects include the potential emergence of unethical conduct among cooperating partners, or as termed here – corrupt collaboration. Such joint unethical efforts, benefiting (directly or indirectly) one or more of the involved parties, occur in business, sports, and even academia. Corrupt collaboration emerges when one party bends ethical rules (here: lie) to set the stage for another party to further bend ethical rules and get the job done, that is, secure personal profit based on joint unethical acts. We propose that corrupt collaborations most commonly occur when all involved parties gain from the corrupt behavior. The current proposal is aimed at unfolding the roots and nature of corrupt collaborations; their existence, the psychological and biological processes underlying them, and the settings most likely to make corrupt collaboration emerge and spread. Accordingly, the information gathered in the current proposal has the potential to change the commonly held conceptions regarding the unidimensional – positive – nature of cooperation. It will help create a comprehensive understanding of cooperation and, specifically, when it should be encouraged or, alternatively, monitored.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31

The Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is losing mass at an increasing pace, in response to atmospheric and ocean forcing. The mechanisms leading to the observed mass loss are poorly understood. It is not clear whether the current trends will be sustained into the future, and how they are affected by regional and global climate variability. In addition, the impacts of Greenland deglaciation on the local and global climate are not well known. This project aims to explain the relationship between GrIS surface melt trends and climate variability, to determine the timing and impacts of multi-century deglaciation of Greenland, and to explain the relationship between ongoing and previous deglaciations during the last interglacial and the Holocene. For this purpose, we will use the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the first full-complexity global climate model to include interactive ice sheet flow and a realistic and physical-based simulation of surface mass balance (the difference between surface accumulation and losses from runoff and sublimation). This tool will include for the first time a large range of temporal and spatial scales of ice sheet-climate interaction in the same model. Previous work has been done with oversimplified and/or uncoupled representations of ice sheet and climate processes, for instance with simplified ocean and/or atmospheric dynamics in Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity, with fixed topography and prescribed ocean components in Regional Climate Models, or with highly parameterized snow albedo and/or melt schemes in General Circulation Models. This project will provide new insights into the coupling between the GrIS and climate change, will lead widespread integration of ice sheets as a new and indispensable component of complex Earth System Models, and will advance our understanding of present and past climate dynamics.

1 677 282 €

Start date: 2016-06-01, End date: 2021-05-31

Online marketplaces enable in the travel context the dynamic matching of supply and demand. The shared economy can revolutionize urban mobility by blurring the traditional division between private and public transport, shifting from an ownership model to Mobility as a Service (MaaS). Existing transport models are designed with the premise that transport consists of either fully scheduled and controlled fleets or individual privately owned vehicles. Since MaaS breaks the conventional division between individual (ownership) and collective (usage) travel alternatives, existing theories and models of travel behaviour, transport network and operations cannot explain the behavioural dynamics, interactions and evolution of both supply-side and demand-side of the marketplace. This research program develops and tests theories and models of transport network in the domain of two-sided mobility market. CriticalMaaS will produce a set of new behavioural models of traveller and supplier choices in transport marketplace settings. The supply- and demand-side dynamics and their interactions will be mathematically formalized and developed in both network flow distribution and agent-based modelling frameworks designed for the analysis of their co-evolution. Models will be used to study emerging patterns, transition phases and critical mass concepts by testing the conditions required for generating economies of scale in market adoption and evolution of MaaS. Models will be estimated and validated using a series of surveys, choice experiments, laboratory experiments, observed behavioural data from on-demand services, focus groups and interviews. The proposed research efforts will result with several theoretical and methodological breakthroughs in the field of transport modelling. In addition, the research program will make methodological and empirical contributions to the field of travel behaviour as well as insights into the dynamics of a two-sided (mobility) marketplace.

1 443 250 €

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

The increasing adoption of digital technologies worldwide creates data flows from places and populations that were previously digitally invisible. The resulting ‘data revolution’ is hailed as a transformative tool for human and economic development. Yet the revolution is primarily a technical one: the power to monitor, sort and intervene is not yet connected to a social justice agenda, nor have the organisations involved addressed the discriminatory potential of data technologies. Instead, the assumption is that the power to visualise and monitor will inevitably benefit the poor and marginalised. This research proposes that a conceptualisation of data justice is necessary to determine ethical paths through a datafying world. Its two main aims are: first, to provide the first critical assessment of the case for, and the obstacles to, data justice as an overall framework for data technologies’ design and governance. Second, to present a conceptual framework for data justice, refining it through public debate. The project will develop an interdisciplinary approach integrating critical data studies with development studies and legal philosophy. Using Sen's Capabilities Approach, it will conceptualise data justice along three dimensions of freedoms: (in)visibility, digital (dis)engagement, and nondiscrimination. Multi-sited ethnography in combination with digital methods will be used to build a conceptual framework, which will then be tested and shaped by debates held in nine locations worldwide. The research is groundbreaking in terms of 1) its use of the Capabilities Approach to address the social impacts of data technologies; 2) its integrative approach to problems previously addressed by the fields of law, informatics and development studies, and 3) its aim to reconcile negative with positive technologically-enabled freedoms, integrating data privacy, nondiscrimination and non-use of data technologies into the same framework as representation and access to data.

1 495 986 €

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

Transparency in politics is the mantra of democratic governance. Should state secrecy, such as classified intelligence programs or closed-door political bargaining be abolished? Despite its revered status, many feel that complete transparency would undermine effective functioning of governments. Take the public responses to the Wikileaks disclosures: many of the disclosures were assessed favorably, but few people defended the idea of total transparency that inspired them. If both complete secrecy and complete transparency are to be rejected, what ratio of secrecy and transparency in politics should we seek? Democratic theory leaves this question unanswered: no systematic assessment of the role of secrecy in a democracy is available. This project solves this problem. By employing the tools of analytic political philosophy, social choice and game theory, we develop a theory of democratic secrecy centred around three theses: 1. Secrecy in exercising executive and legislative power can be democratically authorized; 2. Secrecy protects the integrity of democratic decision-making processes; 3. Balancing secrecy and transparency is an exercise in balancing the values underlying democratic authority and democratic decision-making mechanisms. The results of this philosophical study set a new course in democratic theory by demonstrating that democratic governance requires less openness than traditionally assumed. To complement the theory, criteria for political accountability for wielding political secrets and criteria for assessing responsibility for their unauthorized disclosure are designed. Our results have practical relevance: understanding when and why secrecy is morally acceptable may change the policy approach to transparency provisions, and provide a better fit between the “public right to know” and the needs of governments. Scholars from Poland and the Netherlands assess the use of governmental secrecy in these two, respectively old and new, EU member states.

1 075 109 €

Start date: 2015-08-01, End date: 2020-07-31

Digital identity management concerns the control of digitized information pertaining to a person. This type of information is usually referred to as `personal data’, or ‘personally identifiable information’. With digitisation and automation processes pervading virtually all aspects and domains of society, the routine registration of personal identifiable data is increasing exponentially. The implied risks and challenges to fundamental rights like privacy and non-discrimination are recognized on the highest policy levels, but as of today still poorly understood or analyzed. In view of the fact that ‘identity’ is also a key concept in contemporary social theory, and conceptualisations of the relation between technology and society, ethics and normativity, a field of enquiry emerges at the crossroads of contemporary theoretical, technological and societal developments representing opportunities for frontier research. The overall aims of the project are to increase understanding of the social and ethical aspects of digital identity management (IDM), to further theorising the concept of identity, and to contribute to the quality and social/ethical acceptability of technological developments. The project will achieve these goals by bringing recent insights gained from several disciplines (science and technology studies, surveillance studies, social and technology philosophy, computer ethics) to bear on actual developments in digital identity management, thus exploring novel ways to identify and articulate the issues concerned. With a series of interdisciplinary studies focussing on different application areas of IDM, we intend to produce more fine-grained knowledge of the ways IDM is implicated in contemporary transformations of identity. The programme will involve three complementary PhD projects, and one integrative postdoc project, thus achieving a strong concentration of groundbreaking knowledge on a set of fast emerging intellectual and societal problems.

1 833 000 €

Start date: 2008-10-01, End date: 2014-05-31

Digital technologies are reconfiguring medical practices in ways we still don’t understand. This research project seeks to examine the impact of the digital in medicine by studying the role of pedagogical technologies in how doctors learn the skills of their profession. It focuses on the centuries-old skill of physical examination; a sensing of the body, through the body. Increasingly medical students are learning these skills away from the bedside, through videos, simulated models and in laboratories. My research team will interrogate how learning with these technologies impacts on how doctors learn to sense bodies. Through the rich case of doctors-in-training the study addresses a key challenge in social scientific scholarship regarding how technologies, particularly those digital and virtual, are implicated in bodily, sensory knowing of the world. Our research takes a historically-attuned comparative anthropology approach, advancing the social study of medicine and medical education research in three new directions. First, a team of three ethnographers will attend to both spectacular and mundane technologies in medical education, recognising that everyday learning situations are filled with technologies old and new. Second, it offers the first comparative social study of medical education with fieldwork in three materially and culturally different settings in Western and Eastern Europe, and West Africa. Finally, the study brings historical and ethnographic research of technologies closer together, with a historian conducting oral histories and archival research at each site. Findings will have impact in the social sciences and education research by advancing understanding of how the digital and other technologies are implicated in skills learning. The study will develop novel digital-sensory methodologies and boldly, a new theory of techno-perception. These academic contributions will have practical relevance by improving the training of doctors in digital times.

1 361 507 €

Start date: 2016-03-01, End date: 2021-02-28

Background: Why do individuals repeatedly help strangers even when this incurs personal costs? Current evidence on prosocial behaviour is contradictory, scattered across disciplines, restricted to one-country studies, not taking into account contextual influences, and fails to capture its dynamic nature. An integrated model is needed to increase understanding of prosociality as a societal core value. Aim: To break with monodisciplinary approaches, and grasp the dynamic and contextual nature of prosocial behaviour, I propose a life course model to link individual determinants, social network characteristics and societal contexts. I will test the model in the case of blood donation, as example of real world prosociality where a stranger is helped at a donor’s personal costs. Approach: DONORS comprises three interlinked work packages. 1) Dynamic interplay among individual and network determinants of donor behaviour over the life course. 2) Genetic determinants of prosociality. 3) Contextual variation in donor behaviour. To validate my model, I use six unique, complementary datasets, including prospective, retrospective, country-comparative survey, genetic and registry data. Innovation: 1) A multidisciplinary view —including demography, sociology, psychology— within a dynamic life course approach to enhance theory building. 2) A multi-method design, linking sociological survey with objective health-registry data and combining psychosocial with genetic data. 3) Using country-comparisons to account for the societal contexts in which donor behaviour occurs. Impact: DONORS will inspire a new era of multidisciplinary research on prosocial behaviour. With backgrounds in Medicine, Social Sciences and Psychology, years of experience in science and practice and high-level, award-winning international publications, I am uniquely suited to combine insights from social and health sciences to set the stage for a comprehensive, innovative scientific view on donor behaviour.

1 252 720 €

Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31

Chronology is fundamental to all study of the past. Social and cultural change is incomprehensible without clear information on the ordering and duration of events. However, the exact chronology of the Old World only extends as far back as the mid-1st millennium BC, even though state-level societies in both the Western and the Eastern Hemispheres emerged several millennia before this time. In the New World, the situation is even worse, with none of the pre-Columbian societies currently fixed in calendrical time. No scientific method has so far been able to provide historians of early society with the levels of precision considered essential by their modern counterparts. Indeed, if the 20th century AD were dated at the same resolution as the 20th century BC, the two World Wars would be indistinguishable in time; and the Montgomery Bus Strike might post-date the release of Mandela. ECHOES pioneers the first technique capable of providing ancient history with the same clarity as modern history. The new approach is based on past solar events that initiated sudden increases in the atmospheric concentration of radiocarbon. The enriched concentrations would have been absorbed by all growing plants at the time. Crucially, fossil wood archives already exist in which the growth year of each tree-ring is exactly known, enabling the events to be easily dated. Moreover, the uplifts will also be present in all artefacts that were fashioned from contemporary plant material, such as papyrus documents. Matching the enrichments in such cultural items with the tree-ring archives will also date them to the exact year. ECHOES aims to produce a myriad of such connections to secure key early societies in calendrical time. This will lay the foundations for a globally synchronous, chronological lattice that will allow the flow of technology and ideas to be understood in a way that has never before been previously possible, as each cultural record will be fixed to the same time frame.

1 494 041 €

Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31

"Research in the field of Ethnic and Migration Studies has predominantly focused on immigrants (and their children) with poor educational credentials and the lowest labor market positions. A relative blind spot has been the surge and role of new elites within these populations. The central aim of the ELITES project is to examine the formation of new elites among the Turkish second generation in eight European cities (European cities with large Turkish communities) and a comparison group of elite members of native parentage of lower class background. The ELITES project analyzes differences in the pathways, resources and individual strategies that have contributed to attaining an elite position. The project looks at the impact of these new elites upon the Turkish communities, and to what extent they take up leadership positions in mainstream organisations. For this second part of the ELITES project we focus on the networks of the elite members. The Turkish second generation elite is compared with an elite of native parentage to see if findings for the second generation Turks are specific or are part of a more general pattern. For the ELITES project we use both quantitative and qualitative research methods. We will interview in-dept 240 elites members in eight European cities. The two PhD students will investigate in their subprojects the importance of respectively ethnicity and gender in the elite formation of the two groups. In the second part of the project (sub project 3) we gather information about the closest and most crucial (for their elite position) network members of the respondents. From these network members we will also gather information about their network contacts. The resulting elites network information will be analyzed quantitatively and compared across the eight research sites. In subproject 4 we make a synthesis of the information about elite formation gathered in the two qualitative subprojects and information of the network project."

1 193 198 €

Start date: 2011-12-01, End date: 2015-11-30

By focussing on how the sublime was used in Amsterdam and Paris in grands travaux and in the theatre and spectacle as part of a strategy to persuade the population of the regime’s legitimacy, this program aims to reconstruct an unknown part of the history of the sublime, and lay the foundation for a study of its role in the visual arts and the theatre of early modern Europe. The hypothesis of this program is that early, often hitherto unknown editions and varieties of the sublime from France and the Dutch Republic should be understood primarily against a political background. Many of these were dedicated to important members of ruling families, made for prominent politicians, or read by the ruling classes. Many poems, plays, spectacle, paintings, buildings and public spaces that were experienced as sublime have clear connections with political issues, in particular with the legitimacy of new rulers or regimes, the murder of politicians, or even regicide. In Amsterdam and Paris conspicuous public works served to proclaim that legitimacy, but also became the locus of its contestation. The sublime was used both as a means of persuasion and as a way of articulating the effect of these works on the viewer.

1 245 742 €

Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2018-01-31

Irrespective of whether the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe or a Reform Treaty enters into force, the EU already has a constitution by all but name. But what does it rest on? Both the current treaties and the European Court of Justice often make reference to the national constitutions, either of one Member State individually, or as common constitutional principles and traditions. Yet, whilst the influence of EU law on national constitutional law is well documented, no thorough comprehensive comparative legal research has ever been done into these common constitutional principles. The very foundations of the European constitution have thus remained uncharted. Trans-national comparative constitutional law has been neglected in the scientific research on the European Constitution, while it should be an essential component of the analysis. This project aims to contribute to the scientific debate by going back to the fundamentals of national constitutional law. Its purpose is to analyse and structure common legal constitutional principles across EU Member States and identify constitutional diversity. To that end a team of PI and four post-docs will conduct a comprehensive analysis of the „constitutional law in action” of selected Member States, as expounded in constitutional case law, practice and texts. The functional method of comparative law will be used, analysing constitutional law as it functions in practice. Also, these themes will be analysed in an interdisciplinary fashion, taking account of other disciplines. It is this method which makes this research innovative: the national lines will be crossed, and system-neutral themes be used as a starting point, in order to formulate common principles as well as identify national diversity. It will thus advance the scientific debate on constitutionalism in the EU, and contribute to embedding it in common constitutional traditions, leaving room, where necessary, for national constitutional diversity.

1 645 056 €

Start date: 2008-09-01, End date: 2013-02-28

In Europe, understanding and respect for those who hold different opinions are needed more than ever. In this context, exposure to dissimilar content in the media is crucial because encountering views that challenge one’s beliefs is hoped to foster tolerance. More and more scholars are interested in media diversity and more and more policymakers encourage citizens to see dissimilar views in the media. However, exposure to difference can also do harm, increasing conflict among citizens with different opinions (backfire effects). Despite these dangers, we lack a comprehensive model that explains when and why exposure to dissimilar views amplifies or attenuates hostilities. What encourages people to see dissimilar political content, on which issues, and in which media? Under what conditions, for whom, and why does exposure to dissimilar views backfire? What can be done to minimize the harms and maximize the benefits of encountering difference? This project addresses these questions. It will advance an evidence-based theoretical model that identifies the individual, social, and system factors that together drive dissimilar exposure and its effects on understanding and respect between citizens with different views. This model accounts for old and new media, various political issues, and intended and incidental exposure.The model will be tested in four projects, each offering methodological breakthroughs. I will use latest techniques in ‘big data’ research, automated content analyses, panel surveys, qualitative work, and experiments; the first project to use this necessary variety of cutting-edge techniques conjointly and comparatively. This project will advance academic knowledge. Its findings are crucial for scholars across disciplines, policymakers who optimize media diversity policies, and media and campaign designers. Only if we know when, how, and why citizens are affected by dissimilar media will we be able to enhance respect and understanding in diverse societies.

1 499 384 €

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Over the last decades European societies have become more ethnically diverse. However, a more comprehensive understanding of the life course and population dynamics in migrant families is still lacking. Ignoring a large share of the population in studies on family and population dynamics is exclusive and does not reflect reality. My project is first of all innovative in providing a more comprehensive overview of individual life courses of migrants: events in different life domains are linked and full life trajectories are analysed and explained. I will focus not only on the causes but also study the consequences of life course decisions. The second project goal is to explain the effect of migration on intergenerational solidarity and family ties. The analyses will link different phases in the life course as well as different generations. Families of different migrant and native origin will be compared in these parts. Third, I will make unique comparisons between the life course trajectories in the countries of origin and settlement of migrants. Bringing in the perspective of the sending country is original and crucial for understanding to what extent life course choices are related to the integration process in the host society, or to a trend that also occurs in the country of origin. A final major novelty of this project is that different recent data sources are linked within each of the components of the project. The combination of data from the Gender and Generations Survey (GGS), The Integration of the Second Generation (TIES) survey, the PAIRFAM survey, the European Social Survey, the Demographic and Health Surveys and the census, allow for a more complete understanding of the life courses of migrants and population dynamics in migrant families.

1 012 800 €

Start date: 2011-02-01, End date: 2016-08-31

The key objective of my FATHERCHILD project is to provide novel insights into the questions whether, why, and in what ways, fathers influence their children’s social, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive outcomes. More specifically, this project investigates how inequalities in child outcomes develop through fathers’ parenting practices across childhood and adolescence, and how context may buffer or strengthen fathers’ role in this development of inequalities. The idea underlying the proposed research is that much can be learned about fathers’ role in child outcomes by linking sociological stratification questions to developmental psychology research on father involvement. The relevance of the current project is apparent: inequality is rising all across Europe, people are increasingly relying on their families to get by, and father involvement has become more polarized according to fathers’ socioeconomic position over the decades. The project aims to be innovative in four ways. Firstly, the application of new observation methods and state-of-the-art analytical techniques allows me to tap, more closely than hitherto, into the mechanisms underlying fathers’ influence on child outcomes. Second, unlike previous studies, this project will not limit its focus to the father-child dyad. The use of multi-actor data enables me to assess the relative importance of fathers as transmitters of inequality in the context of the wider family. Thirdly, by expanding the focus beyond the early years of children’s lives, it is possible to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how and why fathers’ role in the transmission of inequality changes across childhood and adolescence. Finally, an important contribution of the project is its potential to compare fathers’ impact on child outcomes longitudinally across three countries, allowing me to investigate the extent to which and why there is cross-national variation in the development of inequalities through fathers’ parenting practices.

1 261 246 €

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

How did free agents (entrepreneurs operating outside of the state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by centralized states between 1500 and 1750? This question will be answered by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of informal empires, defined as a multitude of self-organized networks operating world-wide, whose main goal was safeguarding personal advantages and maximizing profits, in spite of state intervention. Self-organized networks of free agents fought royal monopolies held by the Ottoman Sultans, the Iberian and French Kings and the Dutch, English, Swedish and Danish chartered companies. Free agents, their families and networks operated, in the Atlantic and/or Asia, across geographical borders between empires, went beyond the restrictions imposed by religious differences, ethnicity, defying the interests of the central states in Europe and Asia, questioning loyalties and redefining identities. This informal empire brought to fruition by the individual choices of free agents and their networks as a reaction to the State imposed monopolies was, I hypothesize, a borderless, self-organized, often cross-cultural, multi-ethnic, pluri-national and stateless world. My approach is innovative in that it employs a theoretical grid for the analysis of the instances in which Early Modern monopolies were challenged, mediated, co-opted or simply hijacked by free agents. My model delineates actions and re-actions such as illegal activities, cooperative strategies or extensive collaboration between networks and the central states. Based on the unique comparison between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as well as in the analyses of the Atlantic and Asian expansions of European powers, my proposal will pioneer a new approach to the comparative history of empires during the Early Modern period.

1 499 933 €

Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31

My project is to write a history of the formation of Islam using the vastly important but largely neglected papyri from Egypt. Until the introduction of paper in the 10th C., papyrus was the Mediterranean world’s primary writing material. Thousands of papyrus documents survive, preserving a minutely detailed transcription of daily life, as well as the only contemporary records of Islam’s rise and first wave of conquests. As an historian and papyrologist, my career has been dedicated to developing the potential of this extraordinary resource. The prevailing model of Islam’s formation is based on sources composed by a literary élite some 150 years after the events they describe. The distortions this entails are especially problematic since it was in these first two centuries that Islam’s institutional, social and religious framework developed and stabilised. To form a meaningful understanding of this development requires tackling the contemporary documentary record, as preserved in the papyri. Yet the technical difficulties presented by these mostly unpublished and uncatalogued documents have largely barred their use by historians. This project is a systematic attempt to address this critical problem. The project has three stages: 1) a stocktaking of unedited Arabic, Coptic and Greek papyri; 2) the editing of a corpus of the most significant papyri; 3) the presentation of a synthetic historical analysis through scholarly publications and a dedicated website. By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character and ambition of Muslim state competency at the time of the Islamic conquest; the steps – military, administrative and religious – by which it extended its reach and what this tells us about the origins and evolution of Muslim ideas of rulership, religion and pow

1 000 000 €

Start date: 2009-03-01, End date: 2015-02-28

The proposed research project is a multi-sited ethnography of an emergent global health intervention to improve nutrition in the first 1000 days of life. The intervention links growth during this 1000-day window to chronic and mental illness, human capital, food security, and ecosystem sustainability, positing early life nutrition as the key to meeting the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. The intervention draws numerous disciplines and geographic regions together in a holistic pursuit of a sustainable and healthy collective future. It then unfolds in different settings in diverse and localized ways. The research team will work with first 1000 days experts as well as study deployment sites in the Netherlands, Guatemala, and the Philippines. The innovative anthropological techniques of contrasting and co-laboring will allow us to both analyze the intervention and contribute to its further fine-tuning. Health experts currently recognize that there are social complexities within and differences between the sites involved, but tend to treat these as obstacles to overcome. The innovative force of our research is to consider the adaptive transformations of the intervention as a source of inspiration rather than a hindrance. Where experts currently prioritize the question of how to translate expert knowledge into interventions in the field, we will ask how lessons from the field might be translated back into expert knowledge and, where relevant, made available elsewhere. In the process we will enrich the anthropological repertoire, moving it beyond a choice between criticism or endorsement, turning living with/in difference into both a social ideal and a research style.

1 499 977 €

Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31

Current global-scale research on environmental change has a strong focus on the physical processes that underlie changes in the earth system. Although global environmental change is driven by individual and collective human decisions, most earth system and integrated assessment models lack a proper representation of variation in human decision making. The importance of variation in local context has caused much social-science research on the underlying driving factors and decision making structures to focus on local case studies. Consequently, important insights from social-science have been ignored in global-scale assessment models. The proposed research, which focuses on land system change as one of the dominant processes of global environmental change, contributes to a new generation of integrated global assessment models. These models will explicitly account for the (spatial) variation in decision making to support the design of earth system governance. An improved understanding of the factors that drive decision making will be obtained through a novel approach for the meta-analysis of existing case studies worldwide. Supplementary empirical evidence will be collected by analyzing a number of transects and disentangling the global and local factors that influence land change decisions. Generalized, global-scale multi-agent modelling systems that represent variation in decision making will be developed. While the current approaches are driven mainly by changes in consumption patterns and demography, we propose an alternative approach that accounts for the full range of ecosystem service demands and explicitly addresses the spatial relationship between demand and supply of those services that influence decision making. Incorporating the findings into existing integrated assessment models will be supported by a trans-disciplinary approach to identify the requirements of the science-policy process in earth system governance.

1 499 639 €

Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2019-01-31

Plant foods comprise the majority of most human diets, yet the potential importance of these foods in human evolution is often overlooked. Using a behavioral ecology framework, the HARVEST project explores fundamental questions: Why did hominins choose to eat certain plants? What were their foraging goals? We will focus on two objectives: 1) Reconstructing the diets of fossil hominins and 2) Exploring the costs and benefits of plant foods. To understand the factors driving food choice by ancient hominins, we must know what they ate. Analyses of plant remains, proteins, DNA and other residues preserved in dental calculus are cutting-edge methods for reconstructing diets, and provide information about food, processing techniques, and oral microbiota. With a sequential sampling approach, we will combine these analyses to identify foods consumed by hominin groups for which plants are thought to be of great importance. The decision to consume a particular plant depends on its inherent properties (nutrients and antifeedants) and on the biological and technological abilities of the consumer, so that each potential food has a different cost and benefit. We will study the variation in plant properties among microhabitats in African environments similar to those used by hominins, to better model their food choices. Separately, our study of the food choices among living African foraging and farming groups will reveal if plants are chosen for calories, micronutrients or cultural preferences, while analysis of their gut microbiota and studies of their food processing behaviors will indicate how they acquire nutrients from these foods. Finally, we will assess how the costs of fire might influence food processing choices. Results from these studies will help fill important lacunae in our understanding of hominin diets, broaden our knowledge of hominin behaviors in a variety of environments, and help generate hypotheses about the relationships between diet and human evolution.

1 499 950 €

Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31

The success of humans depends on their ability to cooperate. Cooperation requires learning to avoid actions that harm others and select those that balance benefits for self and others. Reinforcement leaning captures how individuals learn to optimize benefits for themselves, by associating actions and outcomes for the self. The social context requires to incorporate outcomes for others into that equation by transforming them into the currency used to value our own outcomes. Research on empathy, by suggesting that we transform the emotions of others into neural representation of how we would feel in their stead, provides testable mechanistic hypotheses of how we do that. The painful facial expression of our friend after we kick him would be transformed into the pain we would feel when kicked, associating kicking with negative value, thereby motivating us to stop kicking. Testing this hypothesis would require altering brain activity in the anterior insula and cingulate involved in this process, and showing that these changes alter decision making. Because current tools in humans cannot selectively modulate activity in these deeper regions we however remain frustratingly powerless to do so. Here we will develop a brand new method using ultrasounds to modulate brain activity at any depth to brake down this barrier. Using fmri, we will measure vicarious activity and compare it with computational models. This will push our understanding of our social nature to a new computational level, and pave the way to a more causal understanding of prosociality that can inform successful interventions for so far untreatable antisocial disorders. More generally deep brain stimulation via US, and the understanding of how US modulate brain activity, will unleash affective neuroscience to noninvasively explore what had remained beyond our reach: the causal relationship between deeper (limbic) structures and behavior and cognition.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2018-07-01, End date: 2023-06-30

The Industrial Revolution is one of the most important events in human history: within a century, some countries multiplied their per capita income while others stagnated, exacerbating international inequality. Reducing this enduring inequality through industrial development has been a crucial policy goal; however, as no precise understanding of industrial development exists, no consistent international policy has been formulated. The understanding of this phenomenon has been hampered by a lack of data, theory, and historical dynamism. Many studies are, due to the lack of data, conducted on the national level, despite the fact that industrialization is ultimately a regional (i.e. intra-national) phenomenon. The basic principle of regional industrialization was investigated until the 1990s, when the focus shifted to other areas. At that time these studies had still been unconnected with economic location theory, as in the 1990s these were still unable to explain the regional spread of industrialization. Yet, more recent location theories have relaxed certain theoretical assumptions, allowing their application to the spread of industrialization as well. However, even these theories often lack historical dynamism, i.e. the capability to predict and explain the considerable changes that industrialization underwent these past 200 years. Using the regional approach, merging it with recent location theory, and creating a systematic regional dataset, this project will fundamentally alter our insights in the spread and development of industrialization. Analysis will focus on four macro regions and their sub-regions: two in Europe (England and the Low Countries) and two in China (the Yangtze delta and the Yungui area). These macro regions cover the timeline of industrialization (England, then the Low Countries, and much later, the Yangtze and finally the Yungui area) which may have caused different patterns of local industrialization within each of these macro regions.

1 452 309 €

Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31

"This project investigates how growing reliance on housing markets and family property wealth in meeting welfare and security needs is transforming contemporary welfare states. Home ownership normally constitutes a primary family node for the delivery and exchange of shelter, informal care and asset wealth, reducing household dependency on the state. Different modes of housing thereby influence welfare system development overall. In recent decades, increasing market values enhanced perceptions of housing property as a form of social security. Meanwhile, governments have encouraged home purchase as a means for households to accumulate housing assets, thereby insuring themselves against hardship. Understanding the role of housing tenure transformations in welfare system restructuring or the impact of housing markets on welfare regimes is, however, poorly developed. This study breaks new ground by examining how housing markets and welfare systems interact in different regime contexts. It focuses on welfare outcomes of housing as a private good and how housing sector differences influence both macro-state welfare arrangements and micro-household practices. This will advance understanding of how housing markets assume prominent roles in welfare system pathways and influence social stratification. This study will be realized through three sub-projects carried out in six countries that represent contemporary housing and welfare regimes: England, Germany, Romania, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. 1) institutional studies and macro statistical comparisons will evaluate how frameworks of social and welfare security shape, and are shaped by, housing systems; 2) qualitative field studies will asses how families in different housing and welfare regimes perceive, use and exchange housing assets to enhance economic security and welfare capacity; 3) analyses of international panel data will address how households are affected by shifting welfare and housing market conditions."

1 279 786 €

Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2017-01-31

This linguistic research aims to determine and theoretically explain the properties of incomplete parenthesis, in comparison to regular ellipsis and fragments. Thereby, we will provide a systematic typology of (incomplete) parenthetical constructions and amalgamated sentences based on grammatical features, taking into account the effects of syntax, information structure and prosody. We also add a cross-linguistic perspective by comparing the inventory and behavior of parentheses in a number of languages from different families, and we will collect the results in a specialized database that will be made publicly available via an online application.

1 499 554 €

Start date: 2011-02-01, End date: 2016-01-31

Power beyond the state is most prevalent in economic infrastructure hubs with high technology and multiple global actors. Here, investors from emerging powers challenge traditional theory and practice. Chinese and Brazilian companies are now the most important bilateral investors in Africa. They apply existing rules and practices, and introduce new practices of governance and business-society relations that compete with Western norms. But their impact is not properly understood in theories of transnational governance. This project will rethink transnational governance by focusing on the margins of international relations to explain how models and experiences of actors from the Global South redefine the governance of economic hubs. Seemingly in the margins of international political economy, and neglected in International Relations, in Africa new forms of power and governance are invented and tested. Here states are weaker and experiments with multiple non-state actors and modes of governance tolerated. The fringes of theory-building in the discipline, the hubs of transnational economic infrastructure, and everyday practices of cross-border management can be theorized as arenas of the production, contestation and change of transnational governance. INFRAGLOB combines analysing the ideas driving Chinese and Brazilian management of large-scale port and mining projects with multi-sited ethnographic research of exemplary cases in Mozambique and Tanzania, establishing how these concepts are enacted, negotiated and disregarded in practice. It rethinks publics by mapping controversies that connect Africa, Brazil and China, and establishes how interactions and frictions between diverse practitioners and standards change broader transnational governance of business-community relations and security. ‘Infrastructure globalities’ will provide a unique understanding of how the Global South changes practices of governance and business-society relations in a multipolar world.

1 495 909 €

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

This project aims to create a new empirical foundation for the study of long-term African welfare development, in order to provide new impetus to the debate on the root causes of African poverty. What is missing is a systematic account of long-term welfare development that connects the colonial era (c. 1880–1960) to the post-colonial era (c. 1960–present) on the basis of temporally consistent and internationally comparable living standard indicators. The lack of such an empirical foundation has left important research questions unresolved. Firstly, did African income levels fall behind those of the rest of the world during the deep economic and political crises of the late 20th century or long before that? Secondly, to what extent did ordinary Africans benefit from the expansion of colonial trade and foreign investment between 1880 and 1960? Thirdly, to what extent has African welfare growth been constrained by structural development impediments, such as adverse geographical conditions? This project will take three key steps in order to push current research on these questions beyond the state-of-the-art. Firstly, the project will measure the annual development of real wages of various categories of indigenous labourers in selected cities and rural areas in the former British and French African colonies from the 1880s onwards, using the vastly important, but largely unexploited, wage and price statistics from colonial archival sources; then connect these to existing post-colonial wage and price series. Secondly, the project will compare long-term trajectories of African welfare development to those of other world regions, using the available datasets on historical living standards for Europe, Asia and Latin America. Thirdly, the project will explain the observed intra-African variation in these trajectories by integrating the ultimate sources of long-term economic growth (geography, institutions and trade) into a single analytical framework.

1 498 082 €

Start date: 2012-12-01, End date: 2017-11-30

"The mid-2000s saw the emergence of large-scale land acquisitions. While processes of agricultural ‘land grabbing’ have received considerable global attention, particularly in Africa, the land grabbing issue in the countries of the post-Soviet region has gone largely unnoticed This research proposal aims to explore this omission in the ‘land grab’ debate by studying the case of Russia. The main research question is: To what extent and how has global land grabbing occurred in Russia, with what implications to local communities, and how have local communities resisted or modified these land deals (if at all)? The proposed research is pertinent by providing a case distinct from other regions, which is likely to raise new insights on global land grabbing. Several features make the case of Russia remarkably divergent. First, whereas in most parts of the world the current trends see an increase in population density and marginal and forest land being converted into cultivated land, Russia is witness to massive land abandonment and reforestation. Another particular feature is the low level presence of an autonomously organized civil society (which also manifests on the issue of land grabbing contestation). This research will be the first comprehensive study of land grabbing and related rural social movements in Russia and the post-Soviet area at large. Rural movements have been studied mainly in Latin-America, Africa and Asia. In contrast, research on rural movements in post/reform socialist contexts (such as China) is still in its infancy, and practically absent in Russia. The proposed research aims to establish a new field of ‘(post)-socialist land grabbing and rural social mobilisation’ studies. Moreover, it will contribute to more broad debates on civil society and protest in state dominated, post/reform-socialist countries, by studying these issues from the perspective of the (mostly ignored) rural areas."

820 832 €

Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31

The proposed research will analyze the rising phenomenon of transnational arbitrations between private economic actors and public law bodies as a mechanism of global regulatory governance. It breaks with the prevailing view that arbitration involves no more than settling individual disputes and hypothesizes instead that arbitrators generate the rules governing public-private relations rather independently of specific domestic legal systems and their democratic processes, and thereby prospectively steer and restrict government conduct. The body of law thus crafted by arbitral tribunals is what the project designates as lex mercatoria publica, in allusion to the a-national law generated by arbitral tribunals in international private-private disputes. Unlike existing research, the proposed project will provide a comprehensive (historic, sociological, political, economic, and legal) perspective on the lex mercatoria publica and explore its legitimacy. It will, by empirically charting the modern and historic practice of private-public arbitration, describe and analyze the content of the lex mercatoria publica and develop, through comparative law research, normative criteria to assess the legitimacy of private-public arbitrations in democratic societies that are based on the rule of law. The research will result in a comprehensive online database and a codification of both the principles of private-public arbitration and of the lex mercatoria publica as developed and applied by arbitral tribunals. The project will enable arbitrators, judges, and other international and national decision-makers to render more predictable, more circumspect, overall better, and fairer decisions concerning private-public arbitration. This will provide solid foundations for enhancing transnational private-public arbitration as an institution of global regulatory governance in the interest of better and more efficient cooperation between states and private economic actors in the global economy.

1 223 000 €

Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28

Mobility or physical movement contributes to health and well-being in later life and is a key issue in gerontological research. Most studies have focused on the contribution of outdoor mobility to active ageing, but physical and cognitive impairments restrict the mobility of many older adults. MeaningfulMobility will take a more comprehensive approach than previous research. It will be the first to connect the capability approach to mobility research to study diversity in movement within and between places by healthy and impaired older adults. MeaningfulMobility aims to develop and employ an integrative approach to explain mobility practices in later life in relation to well-being. The research objectives are: 1. To compare objectively measured mobility patterns of older adults within and between places, and between impaired and healthy older adults in three socio-cultural contexts; 2. To conduct an in-depth study of the subjective mobility experiences within and between places of impaired and healthy older adults, in three socio-cultural contexts; 3. To use these insights to connect mobility research with the capability approach to gain comprehensive understanding of the diversity in mobility practices in later life in relation to well-being. An in-depth comparative study will be carried out of three categories of older adults: healthy older adults; older adults with early stage Alzheimer’s; and older stroke survivors in three socio-cultural contexts of the Netherlands, the UK and India. The study will apply an innovative convergent mixed-methods design to measure objective mobility patterns and subjective mobility experiences. Data will be subject to geographic, regression, and thematic analysis, and the findings integrated using advanced grounded visualisation methods. This study has the potential to transform gerontological mobility research and to provide policy inputs on the mobility, well-being and health of our ageing population.

1 499 225 €

Start date: 2019-04-01, End date: 2024-03-31

For European historiography, it is self-evident that diaries, correspondences, and other personal documents provide crucial insights not only into how individuals thought about certain issues, but also in how the authors expressed their individuality, and how they saw their active role in history. This holds true both for prominent and ordinary persons, and for a whole variety of genres. In the historiography of Muslim societies, expressions of individuality are rarely ever problematized; the individual is often seen merely as part of a faith community, and the writings of individuals are more often than not just treated as a source for factual information on Islam, politics, or broader social phenomena, not as an effort of personal self-reflection. By analyzing practices of individualization in the personal archives of Muslims in Russia, this program places the Muslim subject at the center. How does a person engage with the Islamic tradition, with the demands of the state and the non-Muslim majority society, but also with other individuals, to design his or her conception of the self (Ar., shakhsiyya)? How is this individuality communicated to others, in letters about love, friendship, or a plethora of other personal matters (SP1)? What is the role of aesthetics in the narratives of the Muslim subject – how does a self-concept obtain a literary form, for instance when experiences are turned into poetry (SP2)? How do Muslims characterize other Muslims when they produce biographies (SP3), and how do they portray themselves in autobiographies (SP4)? And finally, how do Muslims employ photography for expressing their individuality, their belonging to tradition or to the contrary their difference; and how did visual self-conceptions develop, according to personal tastes, values, attitudes, and by mobilizing certain historical heritages (SP5)? Designed according to archival genres, the subprojects contribute to the central hypothesis of a Muslim culture of individuality.

1 499 148 €

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

People show a strong inclination for multitasking: they use multiple devices while driving a car, students do homework while sending text-messages and watching television, and office workers rapidly switch from one task to another. It is crucial to understand the role of multitasking in modern society, whether in terms of set-ting legal limits to multitasking in cases where it leads to unacceptable risks, or designing work situations in which productivity is supported or security is maintained. The goal of this project is to understand what circumstances change a person from an effective multitasker into one overwhelmed by too many demands, and to design countermeasures to keep people in control. A strong interdisciplinary research program in this area is necessary, because improper multitasking can lead to increased risks, loss of productivity and even long-term decrements in cognitive abilities. To investigate these questions we have developed two new groundbreaking methods. The first is the threaded cognition computational model of multitasking. Threaded cognition predicts when and how tasks interfere, by simulating the cognitive processes in the mind. The second is a new method highlighting the areas of interference. This done by using threaded cognition to analyze fMRI neuroimaging data, mapping functional units in the model onto brain areas. The new challenge is to use both methods to understand and predict how people select tasks for multitasking. The unique combination of methods is expected to result in fundamental knowledge on identifying the mechanisms that determine human task decisions, and in under-standing how sequences of such decisions can lead to multitasking situations with dangerous cognitive over-load or productivity dead-ends. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms of task selection in multitasking can be crucially important in designing multitasking environments that improve productivity and safety in-stead of thwarting it.

1 434 574 €

Start date: 2011-11-01, End date: 2016-10-31

19% of the Dutch population suffer from depression and people affected by depression have a significantly higher suicide risk. Although the World Health Organization attributes modifiable environmental factors including urban environments (i.e. the built, natural and social environments) to health outcomes, they are largely disregarded as either stressors or buffers in scientific debates on depression and suicide. A limitation of current studies is that urban environmental features are often restricted to the neighbourhoods within which people live. This may result in incorrect conclusions about health-influencing factors and inappropriate policies. Human life ultimately unfolds over space-time; people are exposed to multiple urban environments not only during daily life but also over the course of their lives. It is this, not yet assessed spatiotemporal interplay of urban exposures that might revolutionize health assessments. This research aims to understand the interactions between urban environments, depression and suicide in the Netherlands. The scientific breakthrough will be dynamic health geographies embedded in space-time by two innovative case studies. We will investigate the following research questions: What are the associations between depression and the built, natural and social urban environments along people’s daily space-time paths? And what are the associations between suicide and the built, natural and social urban environments of previous residential locations? A multidisciplinary approach combining health, geographic information science and urban geography will lead to this breakthrough. It will be grounded on cutting-edge smartphone-based human tracking, health register data and spatiotemporal modelling. Knowledge about dynamic urban exposures is key to revealing disease aetiologies, advancing health preventions and formulating policies supporting a healthier urban living.

1 499 903 €

Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31

Social networks affect many economic interactions, and the social capital embedded in them may help explain broad, macro level outcomes. A recent theory literature develops models of economic allocations in networks. But at this point, we have little evidence on which network mechanisms are most important in practice, how networks interact with markets, and how these micro forces translate into aggregate outcomes. In this proposal I combine micro level measurement with theory to evaluate various mechanisms through which networks affect economic allocations. I explore this theme in four domains. (1) Borrowing and informal insurance in development. I measure the value of connections for borrowing, and study how transfers propagate through the network using field experiments in Peru. (2) Peer effects and the social multiplier. In field experiments I measure financial and peer-based incentives, and how they reinforce each other. I also measure knowledge diffusion about exporting in corporate networks, and the resulting multiplier effect of reducing trade barriers. (3) Information aggregation. I measure how different pieces of information are filtered and aggregated in the social network. (4) Favouritism. I study the economic causes and consequences of favouring friends in a field experiment. I also measure economic misallocation resulting from politicians favouring connected firms in Hungarian data, and the cost to aggregate productivity. In all projects, my measurement emphasizes causality through field experiments and a unique firm level dataset with many sources of variation. Estimating models allows me to contrast theories and generalize the empirical findings. The results will help evaluate the importance of social networks for microeconomic and aggregate allocations, yield lessons on how organizations and policies leverage social mechanisms, and may open a new research area on mechanism design with network effects.

1 165 350 €

Start date: 2011-11-01, End date: 2017-02-28

This study investigates the mechanistic bases of human freeze-fight-flight reactions. The ability to control our social behavior is essential for almost every social interaction. It frequently fails in challenging situations when people fall back on basic defensive „freeze-fight-flight‟ (FFF) reactions. It chronically fails in social motivational disorders, with social anxiety as one extreme, and aggression as another. Such disorders are notoriously resistant to therapy. Accordingly, it is essential that we obtain mechanistic insight into the psychological and neurobiological control of human FFF behavior. Upon a social challenge, an automatic attentive immobility, the freeze reaction, serves fast risk-assessment, needed to optimize subsequent fight-or-flight responses. Precise temporal tuning of FFF responses is critical to adequate coping with social challenges. It is orchestrated by complex neuroendocrine systems, utilizing the steroid hormone testosterone. Imbalances in the temporal dynamics and associated neuroendocrine control of FFF behaviors are highly predictive of animal fear and aggression. Testing these mechanisms in humans is critical to advance mechanistic insight in human FFF control, but has as of yet been foreclosed in the absence of the requisite tools to objectively measure human FFF. Recent innovations have enabled us to demonstrate that human freeze reactions to social threat mimic animal freeze responses (bodily immobility and fear bradycardia). These findings open up paths toward investigating the role of FFF reactions in social motivational disorders. The major aim of the proposed research program is to reveal the mechanistic basis of human FFF regulation through the use of three cutting-edge methods: First I intend to integrate body-postural and electroencephalographic measures to detect, for the first time, the temporal dynamics and neuroendocrine control of the full FFF sequence in healthy individuals and patients with social anxiety and aggressive disorders. Second, I will apply hormonal and neural interventions to directly manipulate human FFF control using testosterone administration and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Third, and most crucially, I will validate the predictive value of basic FFF tendencies prospectively in a large longitudinal study. I will test adolescents in a critical transition phase (age 14-17) when they are most vulnerable to social and hormonal influences and when most symptoms develop. The projected findings will advance core theoretical knowledge of the mechanistic basis of human emotion regulation. Moreover they are of critical importance for clinical treatment and society, breaking the grounds for early symptom detection and (preventive) intervention into social anxiety and aggressive disorders that form an ever-growing burden for society.

1 499 530 €

Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31