Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Students, history teachers and the national past. Research into students' and history teachers' representation of and beliefs about the national past: an exploration regarding context, methodology and strategy." "Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse" "History Research Unit, Leuven, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Kulak Kortrijk Campus, Instructional Psychology and Technology, Cultural History since 1750, Leuven" "Shared knowledge of the past is considered to be important by Western governments since early 19th century. That shared knowledge is meant to serve citizenship and social cohesion (national unity through national identity). History education is thereby considered as an important vehicle. This research project has three main aims: 1) Content-related aim: what are the reference knowledge, basic narratives and beliefs on national history among students and history teachers? 2) Methodological aim: exploration of different approaches in data gathering (essay assignments, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews) and data processing (grounded theory approach with the help of QSR NVivo) 3) Strategic aim: gain know-how with a view to (participation in) international comparative research project applications. Participants in the study are ca 130 undergraduate students (first academic bachelors in history) and 20 history teachers." "Beliefs and practices of prospective history teachers on the relationship between past and present in history education." "Kaat Wils" "Cultural History since 1750, Leuven, Early Modern History (15th-18th Centuries), Leuven, Instructional Psychology and Technology" "Contemporary Western European societies hold differing and partially conflicting expectations towards history education. History education is considered as an autonomous introduction into culture, as a contribution to the formation of critical and democratic cosmopolitans and as an introduction into the scientific discipline of history. Behind these views there are not only differring expectations towards the education in general, but also different ideas about the relationship between past and present. In this project, the central question is how prospective teachers in Flanders deal with the conflicting expectations considering the position of past and present as formulated in the normative texts (curriculum and attainment targets). This research consists of the development, optimization and scientific valorisation of two assessment tools, a questionnaire and a set of performance tasks. Answers will be sought on questions like: what impact has the present on the ideas of prospective history teachers on good history education? Is there a coherence between their ideas and their (novice) practices? Are there differences between students in a professional education bachelor and students from an academic teacher training?" "End of term tests in history as an access to the study of teaching practices. A methodological survey and two case studies." "Kaat Wils" "Cultural History since 1750, Leuven, History Research Unit, Leuven, Instructional Psychology and Technology" "This research project pursues two objectives. It wants to collect written 11th and 12th grade end of term tests in history in a systematic way, and make these available for further educational research by the Specific Teacher Training in History K.U.Leuven in collaboration with other partners (e.g. Centre for Instructional Psychology and Technology, K.U. Leuven). Up to now, written end of term tests are practically never used as a starting point for historical-didactic research into existing teaching practices.This project uses the data as a new approach to study the tension experienced by history teachers between the focus on the present and the focus on historical thinking. Ongoing research - through questionnaires and a set of behavioral tasks linked with in-depth interviews - probed for (epistemological and other) beliefs of student teachers in this matter. Now the other side of the spectrum is investigated. It is not beliefs that are probed, but the concrete teaching practice, through analysis of end of term tests, effectively used in Flemish history education. To what extent and in what way the present (whether in relation to the past, or autonomous, etc.) is covered in these end of term tests, forms the central theme of this research." "Strategic Research Programme: Cultures of Mathematics: Logic, Philosophy and History of Mathematical Practices." "Bart Van Kerkhove, Jean Paul Van Bendegem" "Interdisciplinary Research group - Freemasonry, Law Science Technology and Society, History, Archeology, Arts, Philosophy and Ethics, Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Communication Sciences, Philosophy - Moral Sciences" "Cultures of Mathematics: Logic, Philosophy and History of Mathematical Practices" "Preventive Conservation of Historic Urban Areas Addressing Cultural Values and Socio-Economic Dynamics. Case Study of the Vista Alegre District in Santiago de Cuba" "Koen Van Balen" "Building Materials and Building Technology Section" "Historic urban areas are threatened continuously by time- and context-specific political, economic, socio-cultural and technological factors that determine the changing nature of socio-economic dynamics, which in turn, also influence the meanings and perceptions of cultural values attributed these areas. Therefore, the interrelationship between cultural values and socio-economic dynamics is essential in heritage preservation. In particular, diverse social and economic phenomena have influenced the decay of historic urban areas in Cuba, leading to a permanent claim for integrated new approaches that can contribute to their preservation.In this regard, this research relied on the preventive conservation of built heritage as an emerging alternative for sustainable conservation actions since it focuses on the causes of decay to reduce adverse effects on authenticity and integrity. Accordingly, the following questions guided the reasoning developed: To what extent the interrelationship between cultural values and socio-economic dynamics influences the preservation of historic urban areas? To what extent understanding this interrelationship can contribute to promoting preventive conservation strategies for historic urban areas, specifically for Vista Alegre District in Santiago de Cuba?Thereby, the overall objective was to determine the influence of the interrelationship between cultural values and socio-economic dynamics on the preservation of historic urban areas, by developing an analytical sequence based on the preventive conservation approach, applied to the case study of the Vista Alegre District in Santiago de Cuba. To this end, it was necessary to review theoretical discussions and methodological approaches that helped to analyse the main concepts and understand the principles of preventive conservation. These fundamentals assisted in developing a multidisciplinary toolbox approach that structures the analytical sequence. The findings were revealed by analysing the case study.This research’s main contribution to knowledge was the integration of the otherwise separated concepts of cultural values and socio-economic dynamics in the context of preventive conservation, to determine their influence on the preservation of historic urban areas. The results can be considered as a framework that can assist the conservation and management of historic urban areas by facing the challenges posed by diverse social and economic phenomena." "Towards Story Understanding and Search - Web Mining Methods and Tools for Exploration, Search and Discovery" "Bettina Berendt" "Informatics Section" "Over the past decade the Internet became one of the leading sources of news content, and using different news provider services available on the Internet has for many people become the main medium for staying informed about the world. Such services support Internet users in interaction with stories. In this thesis, we regard a story as a set of time-stampeddocuments describing correlated subjects, such as for example persons, event descriptions, and topics. Our particular interest is to investigate the time dimension of stories and particularly story tracking following a story over time. The goal of different research areas interested in story tracking is to identify and highlight developments novel and relevant information in a story. In this work we restrict ourselves to news collections and investigate effectiveness and usability of temporal text mining (TTM) story tracking methods.Across the thesis we investigate four areas related to stories: (a) stories and search engines; (b) story tracking methods and tools, (c) story tracking evaluation frameworks, and (d) stories and sources. We formalize these 4 thematic areas into more concrete research questions addressed in this thesis: (Q1) How are search engines affected by story developments? (Q2) Does the semi-automatic story tracking approach we developed enable user comprehension andnavigation of stories? (Q3) Can the graph-based patterns extracted by our algorithm be used for story tracking? (Q4) How can different bursty text patterns be used for discovering origins of the changes in document sets? (Q5) How do users interact with interfaces for story tracking? (Q6): How to measure differences between a story across different sources?We start by exploring how search engine users change their behaviour when new developments emerge in a story. For this we investigate a one-year long query log from a leading commercial search engine, and describethe changes of user behaviour correlated with the emergence of new developments. Then, we continue by exploring story tracking methods and tools as means for accommodating for these changes in user behaviour. We propose a new, graph-based, story tracking method and build a tool to support it. Additionally, we investigate the effectiveness of story tracking methods and define a new framework for automatic and user oriented evaluation. Although there are many TTM methods developed, there is a lack ofcommon evaluation procedure. We propose an evaluation framework for measuring how different TTM methods discover novel developments. Apart fromthe automatic evaluation we are interested in how users interact with patterns and learn about the developments of the story they track. For this we propose a set of metrics and procedures for evaluation of user interfaces in the context of story tracking. To test our tool, we conducteda user study of four interfaces in the context of story tracking. Finally, we look at the source dimension of stories and explore the possible differences in news reporting across different families of news sources,and how to measure them.The results of our analysis show that our method is comparable in performance to other TTM methods, and that it meets the requirements for story tracking. We also show that by leveraging the pattern structure and sentence retrieval TTM methods can help discover developments in the news domain. The user study results show that users have a preference for our tool compared to the rest of the tools used in the study. The results also point out that the tool we built meets a number of the requirements discovered in the query log analysis." "Interdisciplinary Research Program: Tradition and naturalness of animal products within a societal context of change." "Luc De Vuyst, Frédéric Leroy" "Brussels Platform for Digital Humanities, Belgian-Argentinean Research Consortium on Fermented Foods and Beverages, Flanders Research Consortium on Fermented Foods and Beverages, Roman Society Research Center, Business, History of Social Change, History, Archeology, Arts, Philosophy and Ethics, Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes, History, Interdisciplinary Historical Food Studies, Department of Bio-engineering Sciences, Industrial Microbiology" "The interdisciplinary project (IRP) entitled ’Tradition and naturalness of animal products within a societal context of change’ is a thematic continuation of an earlier IRP of the Research Groups of Industrial Microbiology and Food Biotechnology and Social and Cultural Food Studies, entitled ‘Food quality, safety, and trust since 1950: societal controversy and biotechnological challenges’, in turn a follow-up of an earlier HOA project (Horizontale Onderzoeksactie) entitled ’Artisan quality of fermented foods: myth, reality, perceptions, and constructions’. The current project combines the expertise of food technologists (research group IMDO), communication scientists (research group MARK/BUSI) and food historians (research groups FOST and HOST). After looking previously into the technological and historical complexities of food artisanship as well as the related aspects of quality and safety, the proposed research now targets the concepts of “tradition” and “naturalness” of animal products in a dynamic setting of societal change. The research theme is of utmost importance not only from an academic point of view but also for society. Its societal relevance is reflected by the fact that food functions as the cement of societies, dominating our daily lives not only due to its physiological but also because of its semiotic value. In periods of major societal change, as we are currently experiencing with market globalization and fast-paced technological innovation, it acts as a focal point for identity search and value creation. The proposed IRP will deal with the specific category of animal products, posing several societal challenges (e.g., issues of sustainability and ethical production and processing) and carrying several layers of meaning (e.g., taboos and ceremonial customs). Also, the meat production chain has been subjected to intense transformations during the past three centuries, including heavy industrialization, lengthening and specialization of the production chain, and concealing of the upsetting act of animal killing in slaughterhouses. Finally, the symptomatic concepts of 'tradition', 'origin', and 'naturalness', which will be central to this IRP, are of paramount significance for this food category." "Building Brussels. Brussels city builders and the production of space, 1794-2015" "Université libre de Bruxelles, History, Architectural Engineering" "Today cities are confronted with the paradox of the results of former functional zoning – originally introduced to protect the viability of urban neighborhoods and to stimulate economic growth by relocating industrial activities to business areas outside the city center – and the disappearance of many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their artisanal knowledge with them. Urbanists, heritage managers and policy makers are now pleading for the revaluation of traditional know how, a reintegration of these businesses in the city center and further support for those activities that have remained thus far in the city. This means that a careful planning of former industrial areas within the city is necessary, as well as the re-use of existing industrial heritage. By finding modern technical solutions for the nuisances that expelled these businesses in the past, more attention can be paid to the complementarity of functions reintegrating businesses and their clients, and work and life at short distance to each other. For the Brussels Capital Region in particular, such an approach is crucial to address a double socio-spatial challenge. First of all, the Capital Region is faced with a strong demographic growth, which creates pressure on industrial areas and buildings to be used for housing. Secondly, Brussels is in great need for jobs, as unemployment numbers among its youngsters without advanced or higher education degrees are particularly high.This IRP will investigate the viability of small and medium enterprises in Brussels from a locational, architectural, business-historical and heritage perspective. The focus will be on the construction sector, where the need for locally anchored and traditionally trained craftsmen and material suppliers is high. The latter strongly participated in the production and construction of urban space. However, they were gradually outranged due to economical evolutions, urban policies and regulations that forced (small) contracting firms, material suppliers and craftsmen to reorganize and relocate their businesses. Paradoxically, today the need for qualified craftsmen and firms as well as knowledge about the local (historical) material resources is urgent due to the growing interest and need for the reuse of buildings, qualitative restoration projects and sustainable urban environments. This research is timely in the light of the actual rezoning of the Canal zone (Kanaalzone) in Brussels and the necessary conservation and re-use of existing industrial heritage in the city center. The IRP will develop an interdisciplinary methodology to trace, understand and evaluate past urban transformations and offer solutions for sustainable future urban development. The results will transcend the case of Brussels and will be applicable to other historical cities as well." "DNA of urbanization: the early urban settlement of Antwerp, late 9th-11th century." "Dries Tys" "Interdisciplinary Historical Food Studies, Earth System Sciences, Multidisciplinary Archaeological Research Institute, Brussels Centre for Urban Studies, History, Archeology, Arts, Philosophy and Ethics, Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes" "The archaeological research of the D-shaped castle zone in Antwerp has provided unique information about the genesis of a medieval city over the past 10 years. It concerns information about production and craftsmanship, import and trade, the layout of the space and urbanity in a special 'castle' context. The sites offer unique data on a European scale and thus opportunities for insights into what a city and urbanity are, before they take on their well-known late medieval form. By means of further research, synthesis and international comparisons, we can put the significance of Antwerp sites and data on the international map as well as translate it to today's urban dwellers.  " "Witnesses in Theban Property Contracts: a practical application of Social Network Analysis" "Mark Depauw" "Ancient History, Leuven" "Inspired by Padgett and Ansell’s seminal paper on the Medici: ‘Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici 1400-1434’, we aim to explore different types of relationships attested in the Theban sources and compare the resulting networks.There has been a substantial amount of research undertaken into the Theban scribes and contracting parties, but witnesses have often been left out. We aim to tackle the issue of who these witnesses were, what status and connections they had in the Theban community and how they were chosen. Based on historical research of scribal traditions in the Ancient Near East, we move on from solely focusing on the interpersonal links between the three main actors of the Demotic contracts: the scribe, the two contracting parties and the witnesses, and are now including information that is often overlooked, in particular the information on neighbours of the contracting parties and other actors often overlooked.While trying to deal with the specific difficulties of historical network analysis, such as the consideration of time in relationships and the directionality of relations in contracts and other written historical documents, we aim to study the neighbourhood networks, scribal networks and family networks individually and as a whole. The similarities and discrepancies should tell us something more on the choice of witnesses, functioning of the scribal and, in extension, the whole of the Theban community."