Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "The social state of Flanders: general contribution on 'Living in Flanders'." "Sien Winters" "Research Group Social and Economic Policy and Social Inclusion, Research Centre of Economic History, Leuven" "On the request of the Flemish parliament the study department of the Flemish government takes the initiative to essay a two-yearly report concerning the social situation in Flanders. In the report six life fields will be taken into consideration, among which housing. The project aims at a general contribution for this of providing. On the basis of existing literature and research results it is described how living in Flanders evolved during the last 20 to 25 years and declarations behind this evolution are explored." "Measuring environmental noise in Flanders: Mapping environmental noise in Flanders and appreciation of the noise environment through a Proof of Concept measurement network of sensors" "Timothy Van Renterghem" "Department of Information technology" "The aim of this study is to set up a Proof of Concept (PoC) for rolling out a measurement network of sensors in a citizen science project. The ultimate goal of this citizen science project is tomap the ambient noise in Flanders, including the classification of noise sources in the (living) environment, and on the other hand to capture the appreciation of that ambient noise.This PoC allows to determine the ideal parameter set and measurement setup (including measuring devices) among a small group of users for the chosen complexity, before rolling it out on a larger scale. In thisthis way, we can gain insight into the most efficient measurement strategy, and learn more concretely in terms of measurements (including measurement locations), classification of types of noise and sources and of data transmission.Capturing the appreciation of noise will also play a central role.The insights from this PoC will be worked out in a concrete roadmap. At a later stage, it should be possible to roll out that plan of approach to a larger population as part of an extensive citizen science project.in which, on the one hand, environmental exposure is mapped out in a more (as much as possible) area-wide way using semi-permanent measuring devices and, on the other hand, noise appreciation in Flanders is monitored on a large scale using a survey tool." "TIMSS2015 Grade 4 Flanders & PIRLS2016 Flanders" "Bieke De Fraine, Sarah Gielen" "Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation" "Trends in Mathematics and Science Study 2015 : FlandersProgress in International Reading Literacy Study 2016 : FlandersThe research centre CO&E was responsible for the Flemish data collection of two large-scale international assessments in primary schools (Grade4):the TIMSS2015-study focusses on math and science, whereas the PIRLS2016-study focusses on reading literacy.These projects entail (1) data collection, (2) writing the report for Flanders and (3) secondary analyses to inform Flemish policymakers." "The social state of Flanders 2011: general contribution on 'Living in Flanders'." "Sien Winters" "Research Group Social and Economic Policy and Social Inclusion" "On de request of the Flemish parliament the Study Department of the Flemish government takes the initiative to essay a two-yearly report concerning the social situation in Flanders. The project aims at providing a general contribution for the report 2011 concerning the living situation in Flanders, in especially concerning housing quality and housing affordability. On the basis of existing literature similarities and differences with other regions and countries are described and economic, social and cultural explanations for this are explored." "Social State of Flanders 2013 - The income position of one-parent families in Flanders." "Dimitri Mortelmans" "Centre for Population, Family and Health" "This project represents a formal research agreement between UA and on the other hand the Flemish Public Service. UA provides the Flemish Public Service research results mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions as stipulated in this contract." "Greening of the tax system in Flanders" "Kris Bachus" "Research Group Sustainable Development" "This research report provides an update of the MIRA studies of 2004, 2011 and 2013 on the greening of the tax system in Flanders. The study develops and updates indicators for measuring the greening of the tax system for Flanders. Since many of the fiscal competences in Belgium are at the federal level, we study the taxes that apply in Flanders, thus including both Flemish and federal tax measures.Before providing the update of the indicators, an overview is given of the of the most important reforms that have taken place in Flanders in the field of environmental taxation. Five tax measures are discussed: the federal tax shift (2015-2015), and on the Flemish level the Increased Contribution Energy Fund (better known as the ‘Turtel tax’, 2016), the reform of the car registration tax (BIV, 2012 and 2015), the reform of the annual circulation tax (2016) and the introduction of the road pricing system (kilometer charge) for trucks (2016).In the next part of this report two types of indicators are developed and calculated for Flanders: revenue-based indicators and tax rate-based indicators. The revenue-based indicators have the advantage that they can easily be added up, the evolution in time is easy to follow up, and they are very suitable for international comparison. However, they also have an important drawback: the tax revenues are partly determined by the quantity of pollution. More pollution leads to higher tax revenues, and this could (wrongly) lead to the conclusion of a greening tax system.The second type, the tax rate-based indicators, responds to this weakness: if the tax rate of an environmentally related tax goes up, this is really a sign of a greening tax system. However, tax rate-based indicators also have a downside: tax rates, or prices, cannot be added up with each other. Therefore, to develop aggregated tax rate-based indicators, we will convert the tax rates into an index.The revenue-based indicators are calculated until the data year 2014, while the tax rate-based indicators can be updated until the current situation (December 2016).The six revenue-based indicators that are discussed in the report are:total revenues from environmentally related taxes;division of the revenues according to the category (energy, transport, Flemish environmental levies, federal ecotaxes);revenues from environmentally related taxes as a percentage of GDP;revenues from environmentally related taxes as a percentage of total tax revenues;the ratio of environmentally related tax revenues to labour tax revenues;revenues from environmentally related taxes per sector and division between households and firms.The discussion on the tax rate-based indicators includes the following eight indicators:individual tax rates on diesel and petrol;aggregated tax rate-based indicators on energy;aggregated tax rate-based indicators on transport;aggregated tax rate-based indicators on Flemish environmental levies;global aggregated tax rate-based indicators;tax rates as a proportion to the end price;implicit tax rates on energy and transport;effective carbon rates on CO2.A conclusion from the analysis of the revenue-based indicators is that the total revenues from environmentally related taxes (in real terms) has hardly changed in the past fifteen years. Within the EU, this means that Flanders and Belgium have always been laggards in terms of the use of green taxation, and this conclusion has not changed recently. Thanks to a number of newly taken measures, such as the increased contribution Energy Fund and the road pricing system for heavy goods vehicles, the revenue-based indicators can be expected to go up in the next few years.Another observation is that households pay about 53 % of all environmentally related taxes in Belgium, and companies pay 45 %. Since 2010, a small shift of the tax pressure to the disadvantage of the households has taken place.The analysis of the tax rate-based indicators tells us that it is particularly the increased contribution Energy Fund (the so-called ‘Turtel tax’) has considerably increased the tax rates on energy use (by households). The tax rate-based indicator for transport shows a small increase in 2016 due to the introduction of the road pricing system for heavy goods vehiclesIf we look at the percentage of the tax in the final price of the product, again the increased contribution Energy Fund is the eye-catcher, as it has increased the percentage for electricity for households from 3.5 % to 16.3 % of the final price. Although still much lower than the transport fuel tax rates, this change can be considered as a major deviation of the trend.Next to the two types of indicators, this study also maps the so-called ‘tax expenditures’, which are reductions and exemptions that apply for environmentally related taxes and which potentially hollow out their environmental impact. We have made up an comprehensive inventory of all reductions and exemptions that apply in Flanders, and we present a separate sheet for each tax and each tax expenditure.The conclusion of the study on the greening of the tax system in Flanders is different from the previous editions. For the first time, we can conclude that Flanders has gone through a wave of fiscal greening in the period 2015-2016. Part of the tax measures were decided because of budgetary necessity (Increased Contribution Energy Fund), but in most cases the green reforms were implemented because of environmental reasons. This could be an indication that Belgium and Flanders are finally responding to the persistent calls from international organisations to green the fiscal system." "Homonegativity and Gender Deviance: A Comparative Analysis of the Relationship between Ideas on Gender and Sexuality in Flanders, The Netherlands, and the United States." "Bart Eeckhout" "Antwerp Media in Society Centre (AMSoC), Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)" "This project investigates to what extent and in what manner attitudes toward non-heteronormative sexualities can be explained by attitudes toward gender. The corpus of analyzed texts consists of book and film reviews from the period 1960 until today. For each compared region (Flanders, The Netherlands, the U.S.), two written media (a newspaper and a weekly) will be analyzed." "Flanders Ed Tech Hub" "Piet Desmet" "Comparative, Historical and Applied Linguistics, Kulak Kortrijk Campus" "The objective is to get new, high-quality educational technologies into Flemish education as quickly as possible and to integrate them within the broad sector of lifelong learning, including through all existing providers of lifelong learning, such as VDAB and Syntra, including their own training courses at businesses." "Climate-Resilient Land Use for Flanders" "Peter Lacoere" "Duurzaam Ruimtegebruik en Mobiliteit" "The broadening and deepening of the expiring PWO research 'Spatial and financial simulation Betonstop 2020-2040' can be done in different dimensions of the research theme of the Bouwshift, or more broadly stated: sustainable land use for Flanders. More and more objectives from the European level grasp the European member states that make the issue of sustainable land use in the context of biodiversity loss, water policy and climate change more pressing. Flanders seems unprepared for this and is taking few steps in relation to the high targets and urgency to take action. Specifically, these are the targets of space neutrality by 2040 (BRV, the Building Shift), the 2050 softening target (BRV), the European land use climate target by 2030 (LULUCF) and the UN and EU's 30% nature area target by 2030 (30x30 target for protected areas) and the UN's land degradation neutrality (SDG 15). These climate and nature objectives have very far-reaching spatial consequences for our region, but these are not approached in an integrated way in spatial policy and spatial research into a vision and overarching objective of future land use for Flanders. There is currently little scientific research in Flanders on the concrete land-use consequences of the European Green Deal objectives and the Climate Objectives. There are partial studies on different land uses and sectors (energy, agriculture, water, nature,...), but these are not integrated into an overarching approach to climate-robust and sustainable land use for the 21st century. Research questions are therefore: which land use distribution should Flanders strive for in the coming decades, to what extent should the current land use change, does the formulated spatial policy meet the objectives from the environmental and nature policy? , which land-use conflicts arise when implementing a new land-use distribution for Flanders, which are the spatial policy instruments (active and passive land policy) to set up a climate-robust land-use for Flanders? This research project thus builds on the research conducted on the Betonstop/Bouwshift and further positions it within an even broader societal project of climate-robust land use. HOGENT DRUM wishes to further develop its research on land use on three pillars: 1. the research programme on climate-robust and sustainable land use for Flanders with spatial implications and integration of the various climate and nature objectives; 2. international cooperation on sustainable and climate-robust land use 3. services to government bodies that need related, policy-preparing research and call on DRUM's expertise for this purpose" "Film, media and nation-building in Flanders." "Gertjan Willems" "Research Centre for Visual Poetics" "This research project aims at investigating the relation between media and nation-building in Flanders. The project consists of two parts. First, the project focuses on film and nation-building in Flanders from 1945 until today. Through quantitative and qualitative textual film analyses, the project critically examines the cinematic representation of Flanders and Flemish identities. Second, the project places these findings in their broader media and cultural context. This is done by editing an interdisciplinary volume on media and nation-building in Flanders from the 19th century until today. In this second part, the project offers an original synthesis of the existing research on media and nation-building in Flanders and formulates a research agenda for the future.BOF Small Research Grant."