61 promising research projects, eight of which are at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, will start with Open Competition SGW XS funding from NWO. The researchers set to work with a promising idea or an innovative and risky initiative.
For VU Amsterdam, these are the following promising researchers in alphabetical order:
Social and organizational psychologist Hillie Aaldering with Are men allowed to be more selfish than women? Perception and approval of gender differences in self-interested motives and behavior Men have higher salaries than women, and are more likely to be in leadership positionsgender differences that cannot be explained by abilities. Aaldering will investigate whether gender differences in expectations and approval of self-interest contribute to this gap. Specifically, this research will discover whether individuals approve of self-interest more in men than in women in the domains of leadership, negotiations, and intra-organizational volunteering. The findings have the potential to change traditional thinking in different disciplines and research areas, such as granting high salaries, selecting negotiators or leaders, and asking for volunteers in organisations.
Elliot Hoey with Recording under scrutiny: Dissecting disagreements over recording devices in encounters between police and bystanders While the ubiquity of recording devices has transformed modern policing into a ’high visibility’ occupation, the police lack training on how to manage civilians recording them, leading to negative impacts on their situational awareness. Hoey will examine how police officers and bystanders act upon the presence of recording devices in police-bystander interactions. He will analyze recordings of real encounters where such devices are made salient, examining how officers productively respond to recording bystanders. This fundamental research will contribute to our understanding of policing in the video age and inform evidence-based training, guidance, and policy.
Isotope researcher Lisette Kootker with From plates to bones? An inquiry into ancient lead intake and the applicability of the lead isotope system for tracing ancient human mobility Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis on archaeological human remains provide direct evidence for mobility. The overlap in Sr-O ratios between geographically different locations, however, complicates the identification of specific regions of origins. Adding the lead isotope system may provide a more accurate indication of the region of origin. The source of lead found in human remains, i.e., geological through food intake, or anthropogenic through contamination from leaded vessels, has not been subject to investigation. Kootker aims to identify the primary source of lead intake in Roman individuals and subsequent assesses the applicability of lead isotopes for tracing human mobility.
Assistant Professor of Patient and Public Engagement Carina Pittens with Power structures in nursing care
Even though hospital nurses formed the backbone of the COVID response, they are reported to experience a lack of decision-making power in policy-making on a micro scale (patient policy) and a meso scale (hospital policy) due to two disempowering structural conditions: the hierarchical nurse-doctor relationships and) a lack of decision-making power in hospital policies. Pittens will investigate the experienced power position of nurses in three hospitals in the Netherlands: ethnographic diaries kept by respondents, semi-structured interviews, partially participant observations and focus groups. In various workshops results are co-analysed with stakeholders for knowledge uptake.
Psychologist Giuliana Spadaro with Living Meta-Analyses: Automatically Creating Literature Reviews using AI techniques Meta-analysis is the gold-standard to perform research synthesis when testing scientific research questions. A recent trend is to publish the necessary statistical data from the relevant studies, to foster transparency and reproducibility. Yet, it still takes considerable effort to retrieve such data and perform a meta-analysis, which results mostly in a textual static PDF-output. Additionally, the results of meta-analyses might quickly become outdated, as these take several years to complete. Spadaro will use a combination of modern AI techniques to create -living meta-analyses- that are automatically built and updated from the underlying data and can be queried on demand.
Health care psychologist Els van der Ven with The Method for the Empowerment of Trauma Survivors (METS): a recovery-oriented group treatment program for undocumented migrants in the Netherlands Undocumented migrants are faced with many problems, such as social exclusion, poor housing conditions, and uncertainty about the future, which all negatively impact their mental wellbeing. However, research including this hard-to-reach population is scarce and conventional interventions may not be suited for this group. Using an innovative research design, Van der Ven will examine the effect of a transdiagnostic group intervention, specifically designed for this population. Outcome measures include personal recovery, perceived stress and participant-rated treatment effect. Feasibility and acceptability of the intervention will also be established. The study findings will serve as the basis for a large multicenter trial.
Anthropologist Michiel Verver with Harbingers of change? Social entrepreneurship’s potential for economic transformation Social enterprises use business entrepreneurship to tackle societal problems. They thereby compensate for the failures of corporations and governments to protect disadvantaged groups and the environment. Increasingly, they are also expected to transform the sectors in which they operate. To date, however, the transformative potential of social entrepreneurship is assumed rather than investigated. Verver addresses this lacuna by drawing on the economic anthropology of Karl Polanyi, developing an approach that considers social enterprises not as a panacea, but as potential harbingers of change. This approach is applied to three diverse cases of social enterprises and their stakeholders in Amsterdam.
Migration researcher Ioana Vrabiescu with Affective Borders The 2024 Schengen enlargement has direct effects on intra-EU mobility, especially by increasing border crossings from/via Ukraine. Vrabiescu questions how this reshapes the practices at the EU-Schengen borders and infuses with tension the daily work of border guards creating a specific organizational atmosphere. Shifting the focus of analysis to the affective dimension of border control, the project aims to understand the consequences of emotions manifest in contexts where ethics, affect and organizational structures overlap. The resulting atmosphere at the border becomes a valuable way to engage in debates on the ethics of people working in border organizations.
Awards SGW Open Competition XS for VU researchers
