Projects
The City is my Church. Constraints and opportunities of urban and rural environments for social capital in contemporary society Ghent University
Traditionally, rural environments have been celibrated as fertile grounds for social solidarity, while urban places were accused of being obstacles for building close and helpful ties. These traditional views have been challenged by authors emphasizing the positive aspects of large settlements and others denying the relevance of the rural-urban divide. The central concern of this dissertation is to find out to what extent rural and urban ...
JUST BONDING: Filiation in Private International Law between Biology, Law, and Society. University of Antwerp
Autumn meeting of the Belgian Society for Cell and Developmental Biology: Endoderm and endoderm derivatives in development and disease. Vrije Universiteit Brussel
endoderm differentiates into the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, and gives rise to thyroid,
lung, esophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas and intestine. Fundamental studies have identified
mechanisms that govern the differentiation of the endoderm and its derived organs. Knowledge of
developmental processes sheds light on ...
Penal politics, the state, civil society and the market: examining the origin, scale and breadth of privatisation across the criminal justice systems in Belgium and France. Ghent University
Over the past decades, neo-liberal ‘minimal state’ governments have increasingly looked towards private enterprise and market-oriented penal reforms for solutions to a wide range of criminal justice issues. These developments have attracted much scholarly attention in the Anglosphere. However, so far few comprehensive criminological studies have empirically and theoretically addressed the more recent and undeniable drive towards privatisation ...
Sabbatical Stefan Rummens: Populism and technocracy: Opposite threats to our democratic society? KU Leuven
During this sabbatical period, I explicitly connect two lines of research of my own for the first time: on the one hand my work on Jürgen Habermas and on the other my work on populism. The connecting element is an investigation into the technocratic content of contemporary politics. The leading research hypothesis is that populism and technocracy should be seen as opposing but mutually reinforcing threats to our contemporary democracy. ...
'No world without the stars': Astrology and Society in the SpanishHabsburg Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt (1560s-1640s). University of Antwerp
Constructing the moral and political (ir)responsibilities towards Syrian and Afghan refugees. A sociological discourse analysis on how Belgian media, the public, civil society and policy have responded to refugee demands. University of Antwerp
Business and human rights : a critical reflection on corporate human rights responsibility through a re-interpretation of US and EU corporate law and its foundational view on the corporations role within society KU Leuven
The current corporate regulatory framework leaves little room for an assessment of the corporate impact on human rights. The aim of this project is to understand why this is the case. It will examine to what extent the current state of affairs reflects a selective interpretation of existing corporate law through a specific ideology (predominantly that of maximizing shareholder value) and to what extent the existing legal provisions would ...
Complex Dynamics in Society: An application of complexity studies on community formation in South West Anatolia during the Hellenistic Period (323-133 BC) KU Leuven
The main goal of this PhD research is to study community formation and development in southwestern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) during the Iron Age, Achaemenid and (early to mid) Hellenistic periods (8th to 2nd centuries BCE). The main case studies are two neighbouring, contemporaneous communities, Sagalassos and Düzen Tepe. Findings on this local scale are then scaled up to treat community formation dynamics on a sub-regional scale – ...