Projects
Bildung revisited: the development of a new conceptual framework of Bildung starting from Charles Taylor’s philosophical anthropology KU Leuven
The last decades our higher educational system has known some notable tendencies: growing specialization, functional reduction and dominance of instrumental reason. These evolutions risk to neglect an important aspect in its pedagogical mission which is traditionally linked to Bildung, the development of pupils and students as integral persons. Yet several stakeholders in education feel the need of rearticulating this important dimension.
...Bildung revisited: the development of a new conceptual framework of Bildung starting from Charles Taylor's philosophical anthropology. University of Antwerp
Back with a vengeance? Khoisan indigeneity as a political resource in South Africa’s settler-colonial present Ghent University
The Khoisan are fast asserting themselves in post-apartheid South Africa after experiencing centuries of assimilation and dispossession. They reject their racial classification as ‘Coloured’ and claim indigeneity to fight their ongoing marginalization. Indigeneity increasingly competes with race as a political resource as the Bantu-speaking ‘Black’ majority calls for expedited land reform and decolonization. Those invested in minority ...
Understanding the political economy of Congo's civil service remunerations and recruitment system. University of Antwerp
The politics of afterlives: Martyrs, sovereignty and the making of Kurdish political community Ghent University
How do dead people shape politics? In the Middle East and beyond, the dead recurrently stand at the heart of political contestations over sovereign power, whether they are celebrated or condemned, exalted or disowned, worshipped or mutilated. This research aims to explain this tenacity of the dead by interrogating political power not only as a question of disciplining life or inflicting death, but also as a question of governing afterlives. ...
New Propaganda as a Totalizing Political Imposture KU Leuven
The advent of what has been recently called ‘new authoritarianism’ confronted researchers with a novel political phenomenon that combines contemporary democracy with traits of traditional totalitarianism. An important feature of new authoritarianism is its distinctively contemporary use of propaganda. Although this new propaganda has been extensively examined within the context of post-truth politics, the prevailing model of falsehood and ...
Advocacy for Migrants in European Transit Zones. Analysing Innovative Strategies for Political Change. Ghent University
A rising number of migrants are ‘stranded’ in so-called ‘transit zones’ across Europe. Most governments try to deter migrants from dwelling in these transit zones, by putting in place a series of repressive policies, e.g. by destroying tents and shelters. This does not deter migrants, but pushes them into ever more destitute living conditions. In response, citizen collectives and established NGOs try to put pressure on their governments, to ...
Understanding settler-Indigenous negotiations: how Indigenous decolonization movements provoke political change in Canada. Ghent University
The goal of this project is to provide an understanding of the negotiation that takes place between Indigenous forms of political agency and settler state structures in Canada. Indigenous decolonial activists often perceive themselves as largely antithetical to and operating independently from the settler state structures they challenge. This project, however, starts from the assumption that Indigenous activists and settler state structures ...