Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Brittle tectonics in the Lufilian fold-and-thrust belt and its foreland. An insight into the stress field record in relation to moving plates (Katanga, DRC)" "Manuel Sintubin" "Division of Geology" "The Lufilian fold-and-thrust belt also known as the Lufilian Arc and the Kundulungu foreland in the Katanga region (Democratic Republic of Congo) have attracted the attention of several generations of geologiststhanks to the discovery of world class Cu-Co ore deposits. Its geological context, tectonic evolution and metallogenesis are relatively well known, in particular for the Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic, Katangan sedimentary sequences that have been folded and faulted during the Lufilian orogeny as a result of the interaction between the Kalahari and the Congo-Tanzania cratons in the context of the Pan-African amalgamation of Gondwana. The Lufilian Arc and its foreland, as the adjacent Mesoproterozoic Kibara belt, also show signs of active tectonics, with incipient rift basins, diffuse seismicity and thermal springs. This region is presently undergoing continental extension in the context of the poorly defined, embryonic south-western branch of the East-African Rift System. But the tectonic evolution of the Lufilian Arc and its foreland between the paroxysmal deformation stages of the Lufilian orogeny at ~ 550 Ma and thelate Neogene to Quaternary development of the south-western branch of the East African rift system, remains poorly understood, although it can be related to an important Cu-dominated mineral remobilization leading to world-class ore deposits. This long period is essentially characterized by brittle tectonics.This research focuses on this long period of brittle tectonics. The outer part of the Lufilian Arc is suitable for this study thanks to well exposed fault-rocks in open mines spread over the entire arc and foreland. In the arc, observations of mesoscopic faultslead to the definition of three different domains (south-eastern, central and north-western), all with diversely oriented faults with breccia and megabreccia. Megabreccia are widespread at regional scale and can be interpreted as a tectonic unit formed during the major Lufilian faultingevent. In the south-eastern part of the outer Lufilian Arc, breccia arebordered by thrust faults parallel to the Lufilian trend. In the central part, however, megabreccia are delimited by subvertical faults with variable orientations, at high angle to the trend of the belt. They show either an oblique thrust or a dip-slip reactivation of bedding planes. Inthe north-western domain, thrust sheets are dominant features. Before this work, the curved architecture of the belt, which reflects the lateral zonation from SE to NW, has been interpreted by some as sourced from acrustal indentation at the last stage of the Lufilian orogeny. We sampled and analysed brittle structures in the Lufilian Arc and its foreland. Our work confirmed the unequal distribution of fault characteristics in the entire outer belt. At each site, dissimilar outcrops provided fault-slip data obeying to a consistent cross-cutting relationship that allowed a chronologic separation. This was used as a criterion for manual separation of large data sets into homogeneous subsets. When computed, coeval sets gave comparable stress tensors. In this work, we reinterpreted the dissimilar geometrical characteristics of the diversely oriented mesoscopic faults that were neglected in previous tectonicmodels (D1-D3). The presence of large tectonic basins in the arc, its foreland and the Kibara basement that can be correlated with seismotectonic features such as earthquake epicentre and thermal springs, is also taken into account. The modern techniques of fault-kinematic analysis and tectonic stress inversion have been used to resolve these questions. We present new fault-kinematic field observations and paleostress results computed from a database of 1889 fault-slip data at 22 sites by interactive stress tensor inversion and data subset separation. They have been assembled and correlated into 8 major brittle events, their relative succession established primarily from field-based criteria and interpreted infunction of the regional tectonic context. The first brittle structuresobserved were formed during the Lufilian compressional climax, after the transition from ductile to brittle deformation (stage 1). They have been re-oriented during the orogenic bending that led to the arcuate shapeof the belt (stage 2). Unfolding the stress directions allowed to reconstruct a well-defined N-S to NNE-SSW direction of compression, consistent with the stress directions recorded outside the belt. Constrictional deformation occurred in the central part of the arc, probably during orogenic bending. After the bending, the Lufilian Arc was affected by a NE-SW transpression of regional significance (stage 3), inducing strike-slipreactivation, dominantly sinistral in the Lufilian Arc and dextral in the Kundelungu foreland. The next two stages were recorded only in the Lufilian Arc. Late-orogenic extension was induced by a σ1σ3 stress-axis permutation in a more transtensional regime (stage 4). Arc-parallel extension (stage 5) marks the final extensional collapse of the Lufilian orogen. Stages 2 to 5 are accompanied by important Cu-Co deposits due to fluid circulation in the related brittle mesostructures. In early Mesozoic, NW-SE transpressional inversion (stage 6) was induced byfar-field stresses generated at the southern active margin of Gondwana.Finally, this region was affected by still active rift-related extension, successively in a NE-SW direction (stage 7, Tanganyika trend) andNW-SE direction (stage 8, Moero-Upemba trend).The variation of tectonic stresses trough time reflects several first-order geodynamic eventsthat affected a much wider region than the one investigated. The brittle data illustrate several stages of a first geodynamic event related to the Lufilian orogeny, since the onset of the brittle realm, at about 550Ma ago: from the paroxysm of orogenic compression (stage 1), oroclinal bending (stage 2) to orogenic collapse (stage 5). The oroclinal bending,resulting in the Lufilian Arc, is considered to be constrained by the Kibara belt to the northwest and the Bangweulu block to the east. The related constrictional deformation also lead to accentuated salt tectonics and the formation of tectonic megabreccia prior to the Lufilian transpressional inversion (stage 3). A second geodynamic event (stage 6) was recorded as a transpressional inversion, which is interpreted as a far-field effect of the Gondwanide orogeny as recorded in the Cape fold belt (South Africa) during the early Mesozoic. The effects of the widely recognised late Santonian and late Maastrichtian regional inversion events have not been found. After the early Mesozoic inversion, the Lufilian region has been affected by extensional tectonics related to the break-up of Gondwana. It is not clear when the extensional conditions started, but two major directions of extension apparently succeeded in time (stages7 & 8), with the last (stage 8) one fitting the current extension directions deduced from earthquake focal mechanisms. Fault-kinematic analysis of brittle structures and the reconstruction of related stress states allowed contributing to an overall geodynamic model of the Lufilian Arc and its foreland. The D1-D3 Lufilian phases are redefined. The new model suggests that only two orogenic phases the D1 (Kolwezian) and D2 (Monwezian) phases are part of the Lufilian orogeny. The D3 (Chilatembo) phase, recorded in orogen-orthogonal structures, is interpreted post-orogenic, related to the previously undocumented far-field stress induced by the Gondwanide collisional transpressional inversion (stage 6). D1 occurred under N-S compression (stage 1) between North and South-Gondwana, Congo-Tanzania and Kalahari cratons respectively. D2 occurred under an NE-SW transpressional inversion (stage 3) during the closure of the Mozambique Ocean caused by the collision between East- and West-Gondwana. Finally, by working on sites with several sub-sites where a large data set can be gathered and which are characterised by a polyphase brittle deformation history, we advanced the methodology of fault-kinematic analysis and tectonic stress inversion by adapting the Win-Tensor program to the context of fold-and-thrust belts. With our experience of the Lufilian Arc, some methodological add-ons such as the interactive data sorting have been developed." "The relationship between the physical and pricing measure in credit markets" "Wim Schoutens" "Statistics and Risk" "During the financial and sovereign crisis, governments protected the financial system from a collapse. The transfer of impaired assets to a bad bank, or a guarantee on these assets, is one of the state aid measures applied by governments to preserve financial stability. The transfer price or guaranteed value is crucial in the assessment of state aid. The real challenge is thus to determine the state-aid-compatible value of impaired assets, which is called the Real Economic Value (REV). The REV of a portfolio of impaired assets is based on a valuation methodology that was established by the European Commission. This methodology uses, inter alia, a suitable credit risk premia. It is therefore important to compare the risk premia actually applied in the REV method to the long-term average risk premia.For that reason, we examine the relative credit risk premium, also called coverage ratio, which is the ratio between the actual and risk-neutral default probability. The latter is the default probability derived from market quotes. The coverage ratio captures the magnitude of distress and perceived risk in credit markets. We consider coverage ratios for different time periods and quantify its long-term average value. Special attention is given to the financial and sovereign crisis and their impact on credit risk premia. We compute the actual default probabilities from yearly transition matrices, while the risk-neutral default probabilities are estimated from credit default swaps. We find that the long-term coverage ratios increased by 30 to 80%. Our results show that coverage ratios have increased since 2008 and that its post-crisis levels (after 2012) are still higher compared to pre-crisis values. If one interprets this increase as a permanent shift in risk premia, it will impact corporates' funding costs.To study the differences between industries in terms of credit risk premia, we change the estimates for the actual default probability and use Moody's Expected Default Frequencies (EDF). For the banking sector, we observe an underestimation of the credit risk before the financial crisis and even after the sovereign crisis this underestimation persists, although to a lesser extent. This observation raises doubts about the applied recovery rate assumption of 40% for senior debt. We examine therefore if the risk-neutral recovery rates for the banking sector are different from this standard value. To this end, we apply and extend the model of Schläfer and Uhrig-Homburg (2014). The model assumes absolute priority rule, which reinforces that senior creditors are paid back in full before the subordinated debt holders can recover their investment. Historical data shows that for the banking sector the absolute priority rule is not always respected and thus senior debt holders transfer a certain amount of the value, to which they are entitled, to the subordinated debt holders. We include absolute priority rule violation in the model and adjust it to the bank specific liability structure.We find empirical evidence that credit markets assume absolute priority rule violation and that the standard assumption of a risk-neutral recovery rate of 40% is not valid for senior debt of European banks in the considered time period. Our estimates are higher than these standard assumptions. In the case of absolute priority rule violation, the average recovery rate implied by the market for senior and subordinated debt are respectively 82% and 73%. Comparing the average implied recovery rates with their historical counterparts indicates that the recovery risk premium is underestimated for senior debt and subordinated debt. The magnitude of the underestimation of the recovery risk premium on senior debt is smaller than the one on subordinated debt.In the last part of this dissertation, we study banks' coverage ratios by incorporating implied recovery rates in the calculations of credit risk premia. Before the financial crisis (2006 and 2007), we still observe that the credit risk of European banks was underestimated. The credit risk premia increased during the financial and sovereign crisis and reduced again in the last years of our observation period (2006-2014). From the start of the financial crisis, we do not find evidence for the underestimation of banks' credit risk premia, which indicates a permanent shift in banks' coverage ratios. This observation points to higher financing costs on banks' debt compared to pre-crisis levels.Our results imply that corporates will face, ceteris paribus, higher credit risk premia and thus higher financing costs on their debt. For banks, this finding is even more pronounced. With the new resolution regulation for banks, due to the enforcement of the strict application of the absolute priority rule, the implied recovery rates of subordinated debt will decrease. Given that the default probability stays the same, banks' subordinated debt will become more expensive. Our insights are valuable for state aid assessments, for pricing default-prone financial instruments and for risk management practices that estimate risk-neutral default and recovery rates." "Unraveling past urbanisation: geoarchaeology brings to light the invisible record of towns in Northwestern Europe" "Multidisciplinary Archaeological Research Institute, Centre of Expertise on Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality" "In Northwestern Europe, two so-called “waves of urbanisation” can be distinguished that date to the Middle Ages. Archaeologically and historically, these have been the subject of longstanding debate. However, several important questions about towns’ origins, formation, and character remain unanswered, as research regarding their very core, namely the sedimentary matrix from which artefacts are retrieved, has remained largely untapped. Moreover, for the Early Medieval Period, written sources are scarce. For the High Medieval Period, these have been used as a dominant source to shape past narratives. In the meantime, archaeological data have held a far less prominent position in the debate on late medieval towns despite their ability to provide a vast amount of unique and complementary information. This project will challenge this status quo by investigating two types of stratigraphical challenges commonly faced in urban archaeology, namely Dark Earths and thinly stratified deposits. Dark Earths, seemingly homogeneous deposits, represent some of the least known aspects of town development. Thinly stratified deposits are too thin to investigate by the naked eye. Geoarchaeology, and micromorphology in particular, is the ideal method to overcome these challenges. This method is applied in an integrated study in order to answer fundamental questions about medieval towns, through characterisation of human activities, natural processes, and taphonomical changes that shaped them. Ultimately, this leads to a synthesis of how the geoarchaeological research of towns significantly shapes, alters, and enhances our understanding of medieval towns." "Discourse analysis in the European Parliament. An investigation and comparison of Dutch and Polish Parliamentarians' interventions." "Sylvia Liseling-Nilsson" "Translation and Intercultural Transfer, Brussels Campus, Multimodality, Interaction and Discourse, Brussels Campus" "The objective of this research project is to investigate and analyse Polish and Dutch Members' of the European Parliament (MEP) interventions, explore the use of their argumentation methods and make a comparative analysis. In the light of Parliamentarians' cultural and linguistic traditions and conventions, the project will compare and analyse the rhetoric from different perspectives such as i.a.: use of language levels, value-laden or neutral descriptions, direct or euphemistic speech, conflict resistance or proneness, im/politeness, level of voice, use of relational and functional markers, forms of address, gender neutrality or emphasis, use of humour and irony or grotesque and respect of the speaking time.Possible explanatory variables for differences and similarities in debating style between MEPs will be sought in, i.a. nationality, political party group membership in the European Parliament, the committee, the debater's seniority, function, importance, gender or role (group leader, rapporteur). Rhetorical approaches to MEPs political communication will focus on the dynamic relationship among speaker, audience and situation.The study material will consist of recorded oral presentations of MEPs. The analysed time span will cover the period from July 2014 to June 2015 i.e. the present Eighth Parliament’s first twelve months after the election." "Disaster Governance: Analyzing inconvenient realities and chances for resilience and sustainability" "Philip McCann, Constanza Parra Novoa" "Division of Geography and Tourism" "English summary Disaster governance Analyzing inconvenient realities and chances for resilience and sustainability A social-ecological systems approach to disaster governance In many places in the world, people are increasingly exposed to disasters.  A few recent disasters illustrate the global magnitude of the problem: the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan in 2011, typhoon Hajyan in the Philippines in 2013, hurricane Irma in the Caribbean in 2017, the earthquakes in Nepal in 2015, the volcano eruption in Guatemala in 2018 and the earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia in 2018. Disasters such as these lead to a disruption of societies, often cause much damage, lead to loss of lives and pose many challenges for recovery. To make things even worse, disasters are expected to increase in frequency and duration, and the causes of disasters are becoming increasingly diverse and complex. Mainly due to climate change, disasters triggered by extreme natural hazards, such as hurricanes and bushfires, will increasingly strike societies. But also human-induced disasters, such as technological disasters and ecological harms produced by an unsustainable use and exploitation of natural resources, are repeatedly threatening societies. Although these different kinds of disasters seem rather distinct, a shared characteristic of most of them is that they result from the interactions between people and their natural environment. To illustrate, natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, are directly caused by the forces of nature. Yet, human or social factors, such as the socio-economic vulnerability of communities and the often disorganized governance of disasters, can also be blamed for influencing and exacerbating the impact of disasters. In this regard, the understanding has been growing that disasters are created by humans – or: ‘socially created’ – instead of ‘acts of God or nature’. In parallel, a shift can be observed in disaster studies. Similar to the shift in governance debates from governing to governance, disaster studies show a development from disaster management to disaster governance. This implies a shift from top-down steering by central governments and a focus on short-term solutions and emergency management, towards the multi-actor sharing of governance roles and longer-term post-disaster transitions. This PhD research focuses on the governance of disasters, because governance can be part of both the cause and solution of disasters. Moreover, it delves into those disasters that occur within and manifest the interface between human actions and natural processes. The research builds on a social-ecological systems perspective to grasp in an integral way the different processes, realities and relevant scales of interaction between natural and social processes shaping societies. Despite the destructive character of disasters, many post-disaster societies express the wish to ‘rebuild-back-better’. From this perspective, post-disaster societies often show many bottom-up initiatives to capitalize the momentum for recovering towards a better system. As such, the aftermath of a disaster provides an opportunity to develop towards more resilient and sustainable societies. Nevertheless, post-disaster learning processes rarely result in widespread improvements of governance systems and the urge to go ‘back to normal’ is often privileged at the expense of the improvement of governance systems to better deal with the dynamics and complexities posed by nature and humans. Why do societies hardly learn from disasters? What explains the societal frustration between different groups of actors in society, often leading to distrust between public, private and civil society institutions? And how can adequate governance systems be created for facilitating post-disaster recovery processes and transitions towards enhanced societal resilience and sustainability? This research contributes to the question what the role is of governance in steering transitions towards more resilient and sustainable social-ecological systems in the face of disasters. It aims to enrich the understanding of disasters and to provide insights in the role of governance and its interaction with natural and socio-institutional processes. A qualitative case-study research of three disasters Based on a qualitative international case-study research of three places in the face of disasters, this research analyzes the ways in which governance can stimulate and enable post-disaster transitions. Based on 89 in-depth interviews, participant observation and document analysis in the three different cases, insights are obtained that contribute to a better understanding of disaster governance. First, the case-study of Christchurch, New Zealand, after the earthquakes in 2011 and 2012 is presented in chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 highlights the value of using a social-ecological systems perspective to better understand disasters and their governance. Moreover, the case-study of Christchurch shows that disasters impact societies in a non-homogeneous way, although the governance response is often based on a homogeneous approach. As a consequence, mismatches can be observed between the needs and wishes of impacted people and the focus of the government. Chapter 3 analyzes an essential condition for resilience: learning. In the aftermath of the earthquakes in Christchurch, there were many bottom-up initiatives by civil society organizations to use the disaster as an opportunity to ‘build-back-better’, nurturing the ground for learning processes. Signs of post-disaster learning could also be observed amongst public and private institutions. However, these learning processes did not lead to widespread societal learning, adaptation and transformation, which hindered the resilience ambition of the city. In fact, learning stayed rather isolated and not bridged between different levels of the multi-level governance system. Second, the case-study of Chiloé, Chile, in the face of the Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) disaster is studied in chapter 4. Chiloé, an island in southern Chile, which locates a large industry of salmon production, was impacted by the virus Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) in 2007. The ISA disaster disrupted the local society and caused severe social, economic and environmental problems. The case-study of Chiloé analyses how resilience of some subsystems can be so rigid and inflexible that it hinders the resilience of other parts and the sustainability of wider systems. As such, this chapter explores the role of governance in interaction with socio-natural processes and found that the strong biotechnological resilience of the salmon industry, on the one hand, hinders changes aiming for resilience of the wider system, on the other hand. Third, chapter 5 presents the case-study of the earthquakes caused by gas extraction in the province of Groningen, the Netherlands. This case-study embodies the social creation of disasters in a very direct way by exploring social processes that lead to a widespread human-induced disaster. Like the first two case-studies, this case highlights the value of a social-ecological systems perspective for understanding the socio-economic vulnerabilities, political-institutional factors, technological and natural dimensions that in their combination lead to the earthquakes and related problems. The case-study focuses on governance processes that aim to increase societal resilience and sustainability, but in reality seem to hinder these ambitions due to the too rigid entanglement of public-private institutional structures, the nature of the disaster and societal distrust. Chapter 6 discusses the findings of the three cases in an integral way through the lenses of multi-level governance for encouraging post-disaster transitions. Despite the frustration and decreasing trust amongst many actors in society, various socially innovative governance practices and processes can be observed in all three cases. Yet, the lack of inclusive planning, risk awareness, risk acceptance and disaster politics seem to hinder the institutional embedding of learning processes to allow wider societal transitions. This PhD research shows that disasters have the power to uncover inconvenient realities, on the one hand. These realities often contribute to the unfolding of the disaster in the first place. On the other hand, disasters also have the power to trigger chances for resilience and sustainability. However, post-disaster learning processes do only rarely lead to broad societal transitions. Only when resilience refers to learning, adaptation and transformation, and encourages in an integral way the social, economic, and natural pillars of sustainability, post-disaster transitions towards enhanced resilience and sustainability can be enabled. The heterogeneity of disasters Disasters have the potential to shake societies and their governance systems not only temporarily, but often for years afterwards as well. It is therefore highly important to create governance processes that are both adequate to meet the needs of society in the first phases of emergency response and to also facilitate multi-actor decision-making processes about longer-term shared ambitions. Recovery processes after disasters, nevertheless, can often be characterized by frustration and a growing distrust amongst different actors in society. People often call for a more socially inclusive process as they want to have their say about the future of their places, want to get recognition for the problems they face and tend to organize themselves in all sorts of initiatives. However, people often feel discouraged in their participatory wishes by the governance approaches pursued by governments and/or private institutions. These diverging views in post-disaster contexts can be explained by the heterogeneity of disasters, resulting in a variety of challenges that disasters pose to societies. The heterogeneity of disasters refers to both the causes and consequences of disasters. From the perspective of the social creation of disasters, a natural hazard does not lead to a disaster per se, but when it intersects in a negative way with societal characteristics, a disaster is born. As such, there are different causes and in particular mixes of causes that result in disasters. In the case of Groningen, the earthquakes are not caused by natural processes, but by gas extraction conducted by humans. Moreover, the governance response to deal with the consequences of the gas extraction exacerbates the problem. The ISA disaster in Chiloé is also a specific example of the combination of natural and social processes through which the disaster is caused. The ISA virus was able to spread very rapidly and towards a big geographical area mainly due to an unsustainable exploitation of the ecosystem, lax regulation and low local governmental power and responsibility. Consequently, there were hardly possibilities to control the industry and collaboratively discuss about sustainable solutions for the industry, local society and environment. As to the consequences of disasters, in the case of Christchurch, there are different needs and wishes related to different temporal stages and geographical areas. To be concrete, some people in badly affected neighborhoods still lived in emergency situations, whereas others already regained their normal life. A disaster response by the government focusing on the future of the city center meant a mismatch with the realities of people that still lived in disaster situations. In the case of Groningen, people are not only differently affected in a physical way by the earthquakes, but also perceive the impact of the problems caused by gas extraction in a different way. Consequently, homogenous governance approaches for post-disaster recovery for all temporal stages and geographical areas are inadequate. Instead, a hybrid, multi-level and more flexible governance constellation would be more suited to capture the plurality of post-disaster needs, wishes and realities. Disaster governance: multi-level, hybrid and political  In this PhD research, governance was analyzed by zooming in into the level of institutions to capture the roles of different public, private and civil society actors and mixes between them. All three case-studies emphasize the importance of including the local level and social engagement in disaster (recovery) processes. The case of Christchurch shows that people want to participate in the reconstruction of their city. In Chiloé, the local government, NGOs and local communities claimed enhanced spaces of participation during the post-ISA period, as they have knowledge about the salmon farming situation which they want to share to improve the governance systems alongside the biotechnological upgrades. In the case of Groningen, people wanted to be engaged in the governance processes in order to have a say in the damage assessment of properties, policies for the future of the region and decision-making about the gas extraction. Moreover, a growing sentiment of distrust in the government only strengthens the call for participation. However, the uneven impact of the disasters made homogeneous governance responses pursued by the governments inappropriate. This applies as well to ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to include public participation in post-disaster governance. People in some situations might ask for a leading role of the government, whereas other situations might call for collaboration. Post-disaster governance should, therefore, be hybrid and able to take on flexible forms according to specific time and place needs. The maturation hybrid governance can therefore help to design tailored, time- and place-specific governance systems aiming for enhanced resilience and sustainability. Another important dimension of disaster governance is politics. Disaster politics influence the framing of disasters, the recognition of the scope of the problems, and debates around who can be held responsible for a disaster. In addition, whether a situation is recognized and officially labelled as a disaster (or not) is a highly political decision. Certain actors might have an interest in not labelling a situation as a disaster. For instance, the earthquakes in Groningen are not generally classified as a disaster. This is mainly due to the interminglement between public and private interests regarding the gas extraction. The rigid endurance of the entangled institutional set-up seems to block a transition towards an improved governance system that can seriously deal with the problems. Moreover, when the power of governments is questioned and when they are blamed for intermingling economic and corporate interests with the interests for the safety of the population, situations of distrust are difficult to avoid. All three cases of Christchurch, Chiloé and Groningen manifest the relationship between trust, politics and public participation. In countries such as New Zealand and the Netherlands, where trust in public institutions is relatively high, it is a huge risk and hard endeavor to regain trust in governance once it is lost. Governance can, therefore, be regarded as a double-edged sword: it can be a means to facilitate multi-level interactions and post-disaster transitions towards more resilient and sustainable societies. Yet, governance mismatches and mistakes in the institutional set-up can also be part of the cause and/or factors exacerbating a disaster. Post-disaster transitions towards resilience and sustainability Despite the destructive impact of disasters, places affected by a disaster are often supposed to be rebuilt in a more resilient and sustainable way. One important aspect of resilience is learning and hence post-disaster learning is crucial. Yet, many societies are repeatedly overwhelmed by disasters. The cases studied in this research show various reasons that explain why post-disaster learning processes do not necessarily lead towards societal and systemic learning, which is highly needed to facilitate adaptation and transformation towards enhanced resilience and sustainability. First, individual (groups of) actors can learn, but when these learning processes stay isolated and are not linked, systemic learning can be hindered. The case of Christchurch shows that public, private and civil society institutions did learn through all sorts of innovative post-disaster processes and activities. These initiatives range from special-purpose state institutions, to civil society initiatives to enable public participation in recovery processes. For instance, there were many bottom-up initiatives to keep people attached to the city and to experiment with sustainable practices. Also, the government launched a big public participation project as part of the recovery process. As such, ‘learning by doing’ was occurring. However, the learning experiences were not bridged and scaled-up towards wider governance improvements. Consequently, better linking and synergising learning processes amongst different levels is essential for enhancing resilience in post-disaster societies. Second, resilience of some subsystems of society might hinder the resilience and sustainability of the wider societal system. In the case of Chiloé, the approach pursued by the government and salmon industry to solve the problems caused by the ISA disaster was dominated by a biotechnological discourse. The solutions to stop the spreading of the virus and other diseases were restricted to chemicals, antibiotics and regulations for the salmon production, whereas the local government and population asked, for instance, for a devolution of government mandates to the lower levels. As such, biotechnological solutions were implemented to solve a much wider societal problem. Consequently, it can be argued that the strong biotechnological resilience of the industry hindered changes aiming for resilience of the wider system. The contradicting interests of different actors limited the installment of an institutional system to support wider societal transitions. Moreover, when resilience of some subsystems stays limited to sectoral adaptation and becomes rigid and inflexible, it can hinder transformation and the sustainability of the wider system and its governance. Resilience, therefore, needs to embrace the three concepts of learning, adaptation and transformation in order to contribute to sustainability. Third, post-disaster learning and (socially) innovative governance practices might create a fertile ground from which transitions can grow, but it often proves difficult to capture and use the post-disaster momentum to embed the experiences into institutional structures. The realities that disasters can uncover might be inconvenient for actors with an interest in the status quo. Prevalent governance systems in society might be examples of these realities and can be part of the reason why a hazard grew into a disaster in the first place. Consequently, the institutional system needs to be able and suited to embed the post-disaster learning processes. Chapter 1 and 6 present a classification of the elements in society that can lead to a disaster. This classification shows that having well-developed institutions is not necessarily enough to facilitate transitions, if these institutions, technical expertise and preparedness are not the most optimal for a specific kind of disaster. In addition, there can be a lot of technical expertise about a certain type of disaster in a particular area, but when a disaster hits another area, it is not that straightforward that the expertise is also present in this area. These aspects make that certain institutions can in fact contribute to the growth of a disaster, and thus need to transform to become adequate for an appropriate governance response. It is therefore highly important to create a governance system that has the ability to formally institutionalize (local) initiatives, governance processes and socially innovative practices. In sum, disasters can be a trigger for transitions towards enhanced resilience and sustainability, but the three processes above explain why post-disaster learning is often hindered instead of enabled. An integral understanding of disasters and governance can allow multi-level linkages and bridges between actors in different areas and from different disciplines, that are needed to enable societies to use disasters as a trigger to ‘build forward’ after a disaster. Policy recommendations  In the conclusions of this thesis, policy recommendations are presented for disaster governance. In sum, these are:1. Acknowledge the differences in impact of a disaster for different places and groups, and tailor governance responses to the more specific needs and wishes. This can mean to have a general view on disaster governance that applies to the overall disaster situation, which needs to be translated into more specific strategies tailored to particular places and/or people.2. Designate a situation as a crisis or disaster in a combined bottom-up and top-down way. This more adequate designation process does more justice to an acknowledgement of the perceptions, realities and problems of people, and encourages the design of governance systems in which governance roles are shared between a plurality of actors.3. Facilitate and enable the linking and bridging of learning experiences between different levels, through for instance informal and formal participatory meetings between (central) governments, businesses and local people. Also, encourage learning from other cases through international collaboration and policy-making.4. Approach disasters in a multidisciplinary way to include all aspects of disasters in disaster governance. Furthermore, enable integral besides domain-specific collaboration, as well as create a bridge between science and policy.5. Foster and use the concepts of resilience and sustainability as guiding compasses in their entireness. When transitions are not fully resilient or sustainable, these ambitions might rather contradict instead of complement each other. Ultimately, four forms of governance can be distinguished from the findings of this research: control, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. These forms relate to both the size of the role of different actors and to the kind of role. Control refers to low freedom for the private sector and civil society and much power to the state to decide on governance processes and actions. Collaboration entails working together and sharing responsibilities between the state, the private sector and the civil society. Cooperation means that the state has a leading role, but cooperates with the private sector and civil society. Finally, coordination refers to a style of governance in which the state coordinates between, and perhaps facilitates, the activities and roles of other state actors, the private sector or the civil society. Different people, geographical areas and time phases ask for different and hybrid forms of governance. Applying this categorization to the governance of disasters would aid in gaining a better understanding of disasters and for creating disaster governance systems to better deal with them. " "Greenways as a New Planning Strategy in the Pearl River Delta, China" "Bruno De Meulder" "Architecture and Design" "The term of greenway is a derivation from greenbelt and parkway, which refer to linear green open spaces that serve for ecological, recreational, cultural, aesthetic, or other purposes compatible with the concept of sustainable land use. In the 1990s, the greenway movement in the world arose as a response, driven by basic human needs, to urbanization. In the diverse contexts, greenways have been an adaptive landscape form that have been involved in diverse fields, including landscape architecture, recreational policies, environmental protection, and ecological conservation. While the multiple benefits of greenways have been intensively investigated, greenways are receiving increasing interests in public policies, especially in those regions that are dealing with issues associated with the rapid urbanization. However, while the heterogeneity of the forms and functions of greenways increases, few researches focus on the interplay among the greenway discourse, natural-spatial conditions, institutional practices, and their influences on greenway spaces and public perceptions. As a new planning strategy, greenways were first adopted in a government report, Proposal of the Pearl River Delta Greenway Network drawing on foreign experiences, to the Provincial Party Secretary in 2009. With the approval of Guangdong Province Government, a three-year campaign for the Pearl River Delta Greenway Network was initiated, in which nine municipalities were involved. The campaign not only established a greenway network of 7,350 kilometers, but also transform the regional discourse of greenways into the institutional practices at local level, which led to the growth of greenways after 2012 and reached to over 150,000 kilometers in 2019. In the meantime, the PRD greenways have been seen as pilot project in China and lead to a nationwide greenway movement. According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural development, 56,000 kilometers of greenways in 31 provinces were developed during 2010 and 2018. But there also has been a long-term debate on the functions and forms of the PRD greenways, in which some actors and scholars criticize the PRD greenways for lacking ecological concerns and the overlap of greenways and existing transportation infrastructures. However, few evidences were found in the existing literature that can examine these arguments, as well as can elaborate the possible causes and potential issues.  Through in-depth empirical studies in the PRD, this research argues that the relation between planning background and planning activities play an important role in influencing the planning outcomes. The empirical findings show that, because of the scale of metropolitan region, intensively developed landscape context, and diverse issues associated with the rapid urbanization, the provincial and municipal government develop a special approach so that the greenway network could be established in short time. First, drawing on the institutional tradition of pressurized system, the provincial government initiated a centralized institutional structure to promote multi-government cooperation and to supervise the assignments that are distributed to the lower-level governments. Second, instead of land acquisition for new corridors, local governments prefer to integrate existing open spaces that are of public rights-of-way, so that rapid development of greenways could be rapidly achieved without consuming the valuable land quotas. Third, in the implementation of greenways, the original ownership and particularly the administrative jurisdictions usually remain unchanged, which also help to identify the responsible actors of finance and construction, as well as post-campaign management and maintenance. From the perspective of landscape governance, these arrangements could be seen as adaptive strategies to combine the greenways and the pressurized system as the regional discourse, and to solve the policy conflicts between the regional discourse and local practices at different stages.In the end, transportation, recreational, social and economic benefits were found in many cases. In general, the development of the PRD greenways contributes to provide transportation route and recreational resources to both urban and rural areas. In particular, greenways are serving as compensatory public goods, such as non-motorized infrastructure, street greeneries and recreational facilities, to areas that used to lack government investment. In addition, greenways help to establish tourism economy in some villages that are struggling with issues of poverty and outflowing population.However, the centralized institutional structure in the PRD also results in a series of new issues. First, the greenway development in the PRD has high dependency of the administrative system, while the decrease political attention could lead to insufficient investment and management of greenway at the post-campaign stage. Second, the participation of social groups is still rare in the PRD greenways, which usually play important roles in acquiring land, applying funds, management and maintenance. Third, because of the tight schedule and inadequate resources, transportation-led greenways become the primary form of greenways, which result in conflicting perception of greenways, and serious challenges to the recreational and ecological values of greenways.Through case of Shenzhen, this research unravels the heterogeneity in the greenway network, which disparities of the corridor width, traffic impact and land use were found in Shenzhen. Corridor width, traffic impact and land use are crucial factors in determining the conservational, recreational and transportation values, which are the “three-legged stool” of greenways. However, the empirical findings in Shenzhen show that, although there are many off-road greenways have wide green corridors, the majority of greenways are developed based on the existing transportation infrastructure and street greeneries. These transportation-led greenways are result of the special approach of greenway development in the PRD. In addition, they also reflect the rising trend of so-called “new urban greenways”, which serve as alternative transportation in intensively developed cities and are widely found in the world.The investigation of public perception also proves the recreational benefits, and transportation-led greenways as the common form of the PRD greenways. The majority of the respondents recognize positive impacts of greenways on their life of quality. The results further reveal that although greenways comprise a network of high density in the PRD, the respondents still have difficulties in accessing greenways. The primary reason is that many of the developed greenways do not have identifiable characteristics in the surrounding landscape, in contrast with those streets without greenways. Furthermore, although ecological benefits are rarely recognized, the respondents suggest that there are many demands that greenways can serve, including both hiking trails in outskirts and everyday commute routes. From this perspective, as a new planning strategy, greenways are evolving into various forms, such as South China Historical Trails and Guangdong Blueways, to serve the diverse needs.Situating within the Chinese context, this research outline two policy implications. On the one hand, rather than diverse lowest-level government unit, professional agencies for greenway development and maintenance are required, which also need policy support for setting special funds and encouraging public participation. On the other hand, more attention should be paid to the heterogeneity of greenways and the examination of the proposed planning goals, while evidence-based planning is still commonly absent in practices and leads to issues of inconsistency between planning goals and planning outcomes.The term of greenway is a derivation from greenbelt and parkway, which refer to linear green open spaces that serve for ecological, recreational, cultural, aesthetic, or other purposes compatible with the concept of sustainable land use. In the 1990s, the greenway movement in the world arose as a response, driven by basic human needs, to urbanization. In the diverse contexts, greenways have been an adaptive landscape form that have been involved in diverse fields, including landscape architecture, recreational policies, environmental protection, and ecological conservation. While the multiple benefits of greenways have been intensively investigated, greenways are receiving increasing interests in public policies, especially in those regions that are dealing with issues associated with the rapid urbanization. However, while the heterogeneity of the forms and functions of greenways increases, few researches focus on the interplay among the greenway discourse, natural-spatial conditions, institutional practices, and their influences on greenway spaces and public perceptions. In particular, most of the existing studies haveAs a new planning strategy, greenways were first adopted in a government report, Proposal of the Pearl River Delta Greenway Network drawing on foreign experiences, to the Provincial Party Secretary in 2009. With the approval of Guangdong Province Government, a three-year campaign for the Pearl River Delta Greenway Network was initiated, in which nine municipalities were involved. The campaign not only established a greenway network of 7,350 kilometers, but also transform the regional discourse of greenways into the institutional practices at local level, which led to the growth of greenways after 2012 and reached to over 150,000 kilometers in 2019. In the meantime, the PRD greenways have been seen as pilot project in China and lead to a nationwide greenway movement. According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural development, 56,000 kilometers of greenways in 31 provinces were developed during 2010 and 2018. But there also has been a long-term debate on the functions and forms of the PRD greenways, in which some actors and scholars criticize the PRD greenways for lacking ecological concerns and the overlap of greenways and existing transportation infrastructures. However, few evidences were found in the existing literature that can examine these arguments, as well as can elaborate the possible causes and potential issues.  Through in-depth empirical studies in the PRD, this research argues that the relation between planning background and planning activities play an important role in influencing the planning outcomes. The empirical findings show that, because of the scale of metropolitan region, intensively developed landscape context, and diverse issues associated with the rapid urbanization, the provincial and municipal government develop a special approach so that the greenway network could be established in short time. First, drawing on the institutional tradition of pressurized system, the provincial government initiated a centralized institutional structure to promote multi-government cooperation and to supervise the assignments that are distributed to the lower-level governments. Second, instead of land acquisition for new corridors, local governments prefer to integrate existing open spaces that are of public rights-of-way, so that rapid development of greenways could be rapidly achieved without consuming the valuable land quotas. Third, in the implementation of greenways, the original ownership and particularly the administrative jurisdictions usually remain unchanged, which also help to identify the responsible actors of finance and construction, as well as post-campaign management and maintenance. From the perspective of landscape governance, these arrangements could be seen as adaptive strategies to combine the greenways and the pressurized system as the regional discourse, and to solve the policy conflicts between the regional discourse and local practices at different stages.In the end, transportation, recreational, social and economic benefits were found in many cases. In general, the development of the PRD greenways contributes to provide transportation route and recreational resources to both urban and rural areas. In particular, greenways are serving as compensatory public goods, such as non-motorized infrastructure, street greeneries and recreational facilities, to areas that used to lack government investment. In addition, greenways help to establish tourism economy in some villages that are struggling with issues of poverty and outflowing population.However, the centralized institutional structure in the PRD also results in a series of new issues. First, the greenway development in the PRD has high dependency of the administrative system, while the decrease political attention could lead to insufficient investment and management of greenway at the post-campaign stage. Second, the participation of social groups is still rare in the PRD greenways, which usually play important roles in acquiring land, applying funds, management and maintenance. Third, because of the tight schedule and inadequate resources, transportation-led greenways become the primary form of greenways, which result in conflicting perception of greenways, and serious challenges to the recreational and ecological values of greenways.Through case of Shenzhen, this research unravels the heterogeneity in the greenway network, which disparities of the corridor width, traffic impact and land use were found in Shenzhen. Corridor width, traffic impact and land use are crucial factors in determining the conservational, recreational and transportation values, which are the “three-legged stool” of greenways. However, the empirical findings in Shenzhen show that, although there are many off-road greenways have wide green corridors, the majority of greenways are developed based on the existing transportation infrastructure and street greeneries. These transportation-led greenways are result of the special approach of greenway development in the PRD. In addition, they also reflect the rising trend of so-called “new urban greenways”, which serve as alternative transportation in intensively developed cities and are widely found in the world.The investigation of public perception also proves the recreational benefits, and transportation-led greenways as the common form of the PRD greenways. The majority of the respondents recognize positive impacts of greenways on their life of quality. The results further reveal that although greenways comprise a network of high density in the PRD, the respondents still have difficulties in accessing greenways. The primary reason is that many of the developed greenways do not have identifiable characteristics in the surrounding landscape, in contrast with those streets without greenways. Furthermore, although ecological benefits are rarely recognized, the respondents suggest that there are many demands that greenways can serve, including both hiking trails in outskirts and everyday commute routes. From this perspective, as a new planning strategy, greenways are evolving into various forms, such as South China Historical Trails and Guangdong Blueways, to serve the diverse needs.Situating within the Chinese context, this research outline two policy implications. On the one hand, rather than diverse lowest-level government unit, professional agencies for greenway development and maintenance are required, which also need policy support for setting special funds and encouraging public participation. On the other hand, more attention should be paid to the heterogeneity of greenways and the examination of the proposed planning goals, while evidence-based planning is still commonly absent in practices and leads to issues of inconsistency between planning goals and planning outcomes." "Lady Justice’s Thresholds: Access to and Inequality in Early Modern Law Courts" "Klaas Van Gelder" "History, Archeology, Arts, Philosophy and Ethics" "In the field of social history of the law, there has been a lot of recent attention for civil case law and case files in Early Modern Europe. These provide us with unique insights into tensions and forms of conflict settlement, as well as into the means of action and the lives of people who otherwise left little to no sources. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, artificial intelligence, and a resolutely comparative approach, my research helps reconstruct patterns of litigation for various types of courts. Moreover, it also allows us to detect and scrutinize parameters that determined access to court, such as gender, place of residence, and socio-economic position. This research thus contributes to debates on inequality, the uses of justice, and human agency. Paradoxically, its greatest challenge is the enormous wealth of archival sources. In order to make statements, a database is required in which data on the thousands of litigants is collected for various samples from the early modern period, and for various courts. This database can then be used not only for my own research, but also for applications for European, Belgian and Flemish project funding. Furthermore, this data will greatly benefit HOST, one of the spearhead research teams at VUB with inequality as one of its most important research topics. The ZAP start-up bonus makes it possible to create an elaborate and representative dataset for several law courts." "Vaccine hesitancy in the (post-) COVID-19 EU: Effects of European identity, party orientation, trust and political polarization." "Koen Verhoest" "Politics & Public Governance" "Currently, the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy (VH) – a reluctance or refusal to be vaccinated – varies considerably across EU member states (74,3% in Spain versus 58,9% in France and 56,3% in Poland) (Lazarus et al., 2020). Understanding why and how this vaccine hesitancy occurs is important, and the relevance of this issue carries beyond national borders. This is especially the case in the EU–comprised of 27 countries with diverse experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, various political systems and citizens embedded in different political communities. So far, vaccine hesitancy in developed countries has been investigated mostly from the health sciences perspective and focused almost exclusively (1) on socio-economic and demographic explanations (2) in specific subgroups of the population (at meso- levels, e.g. health professionals, parents, religious or immigrant communities). Little has been done in the field of political science to explore possible (1) political explanations for vaccine hesitancy and (2) at other than meso-levels (i.e. at macro-(cross-country) and micro-(individual)level). Meanwhile, the cross-national differences in VH and recent evidence suggest that VH might be strongly linked to political factors. Against this backdrop, this project asks: how do political factors explain vaccine hesitancy at macro- and micro-levels? In this interdisciplinary project, I combine insights from political science, political psychology, European studies, public administration and health sciences to build a theoretical model offering political explanations of vaccine hesitancy. Based on extensive literature review, I conceptualize vaccine hesitancy as contradictory to vaccination, which is a (a) pro-social (b) rule and norm compliant (c) risk-taking behavior. As such, it is likely to be a result of both normative (i.e. European identity, party orientations) and instrumental modes of compliance (i.e. trust) known from the compliance literature. To these, I add one more political factor of possibly high relevance for vaccine hesitancy: political polarization. As research shows, increasing political polarization is currently undermining functioning of democratic regimes around the world (Carothers & O'Donohue, 2019; Citrin & Stoker, 2018; McCoy, Rahman, & Somer, 2018; McCoy & Somer, 2019). In politically polarized states, ""cleavages are likely to be very deep, consensus is surely low, and legitimacy of the political system is widely questioned"" (Sartori, 1976, p. 135). High political polarization hinders government's capacity to solve collective action problems, which might result in e.g. vaccine hesitancy. This project contributes to several important academic debates. First, I add to health sciences by bringing in a political science perspective: I offer new political explanations to the old questions of vaccine hesitancy. Second, I formulate socio-political consequences of political polarization and trust in a highly relevant area of public health. Third, I adapt the theoretical framework of rule compliance to a new field of vaccination and vaccine hesitancy. Fourth, I link the specific rule compliance behavior to the issues of national vs. European identity, exploring to what extent these political identities can be translated into a pro-social risk-taking behavior." "A Philosophy of Radical Politics: Revolutionary Gnosticism and the Case of Salafi-Jihadism" "John Nawas" "Arabic Studies, Leuven" "Many philosophers and sociologists have used the category of revolutionary Gnosticism to frame different modern and contemporary ideologies and social movements. Revolutionary, or political, Gnosticism is a category introduced in the academic debate by the political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) in order to investigate the two main ideologies of the 20th-century, Nazism and Communism. After Voegelin, many other scholars started to use this explicative category, deepening its implications with ancient Gnosticism and applying it to cast new light on modern mass movements ideologically oriented. The present research aims at adopting revolutionary Gnosticism to frame Salafi-jihadism in a new and innovative way. In fact, Islamist terrorism, despite its constant referring to traditional doctrines, is an ideology that shows many elements that are alien to Islamic orthodoxy. Thus, the objective of the research is to read Salafi-jihadism as an ideology born from the encounter of the more inflexible and literalist Islam and the communistic ideologies from the West where it was revolutionary Gnosticism. Therefore, Salafi- jihadism would be a new metamorphosis of a thousand-years old force, Gnosticism, which is a mutant energy that has recycled itself in disparate cultural contexts and philosophical atmospheres. Corollary of this research is the demonstration of the heterodoxy of radical Islamism in relation to traditional Islam." "Crime & Society: New Challenges" "Lucas Melgaço, Sonja Snacken" Criminology "Research has focused over the last 25 years on a critical analysis of the social phenomena of crime and deviance and of the formal and informal reactions to these phenomena. It developed through three main research areas: penology, juvenile criminology and policing and security. This has resulted in a strong interdisciplinary tradition of theoretical and empirical research into crime phenomena (e.g. persistent juvenile delinquency, sex offences, desistance from crime), societal reactions (e.g. risk or exclusive society, neighbourhood watch initiatives, public attitudes towards crime and punishment) and criminal justice policies and practices (e.g. public and private policing, juvenile justice systems, sentencing and implementation of custodial and non-custodial sanctions for adult offenders)."