XS grants from SSH Open Competition for five FSBS researchers
NWO awarded five researchers from the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciencesa grant from the SGW Open Competition XS. These are grants of up to €50,000 intended to enable promising ideas, innovative and high-risk initiatives within the Social Sciences and Humanities (SGW).
The honoured projects are initiatives of Teuni ten Brink, Deana Jovanović, Angelos Krypotos, Marlene Schäfers and Jellie Sierksma.
Visual impairments following brain damage are often difficult to diagnose because of unreliable tests. As a result, proper treatment cannot be started. This reduces the well-being, daily functioning, and development of patients. This project investigates a new, objective, and fun diagnostic test in which no explicit responses are needed, making results more reliable. Patients watch entertaining videos while pupil sizes are measured with an eye-tracker. Objects that are not perceived will elicit weaker pupil responses. Smart mathematical models can quickly map the sensitivity of the visual field. This improves patient screening and provides fundamental insights into how visual perception works.
This research explores the impact of Chinese investments in the Balkans, driven by the Belt and Road Initiative. The study explores experiences of transformations of everyday day life in a Serbian village caused by rapidly expanding open-cast copper mines, recently taken over by one of the world-leading Chinese copper and gold companies. The project also studies if and how experiences of disturbance and prospective relocation of the village are worsening social inequalities. This is the first ethnographic study to help us understand the social impact of such rapid transformations at Europe's periphery caused by the presence of global Chinese investments.
Everyone experiences pain sometimes but for a significant number of individuals acute pain can derail into chronic pain. A critical factor in the transition between acute and chronic pain is pain-avoidance. Such avoidance, however, is not often investigated in real-life settings and the relevant individual differences are often ignored. Here, I test a novel framework for examining how pain-avoidance contributes to the transition between acute to chronic pain, as well as examine the role of individual differences. This project will pave the way for future prevention programs against chronic pain, alleviating the suffering of millions of people.
This innovative project delves into the often-overlooked aftermath of death during migration through an ethnographic study of Turkey’s largest cemetery for unidentified migrants in Van, close to the Iranian border. It asks how politics of migration determine not only how people become mobile when alive, but how such politics also shape the fate of deceased migrants after death. In this way, the project promises original insights into the enduring impact of contemporary European border politics. It will culminate in an interactive online exhibition that documents the sites and stories of migrant death at Turkey’s easternmost border.
The exchange of help between children has many positive consequences, but when help is non-empowering (i.e., taking over, providing answers) it does not lead to the improvement of skills and can undermine feelings of autonomy and competence in recipients. As exchanges of help are foundational for children’s social and academic development, this project examines when and why young children (6-8 years) seek and provide empowering and non-empowering help. This research is pivotal to stimulate exchanges of help early in life that foster mastery learning and prevent educational inequality.