Projects
Defining virtual borders – the impact of securitizing and civilizational narratives on the formation of Internet policy by Russia KU Leuven
Over the course of the last decade, the information space has risen as a new area of contestation between Russia and the West. The implications of the instrumental use of information and communication resources to achieve political-military goals are greatly exacerbated by the increasing levels of global connectivity and the growing dependence on Internet infrastructure to make networked communication possible. With tensions rising over the ...
En Ecoutant du Schumann. Aesthetic Space and Interiority in Fin-de-siècle Brussels. KU Leuven
Circles such as Les XX and La Libre Esthétique showed that the consumption of art and music in fin de siècle Belgium was a distinctively private matter, often situated in the domestic and private spaces of bourgeois society, like homes or art studios. Yet, tastes were also part of a swiftly industrializing, modern public space. In this paradoxical context, and precisely because of it, art and music, like the hybrid domestic environment in ...
Narrating Everyday Shanghai, 1950-2000 KU Leuven
Housing, conceived as a multi-dimensional issue in modern architecture and cities, has been to some degree overlooked in Chinese architectural discourse, especially in the second half of the 20th century. Even in the renowned metropolis, Shanghai, where the most remarkable urbanization had happened in the early 20th century, housing and domestic life were diminished as subject to industrial production. However, when the view turns to written ...
Smart Thermal Grids. University of Antwerp
Development of a methodology to automatically quantify district energy use in support of designing district energy systems KU Leuven
To prevent climate change from progressing rapidly, greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced drastically. The built environment represents a large share of the energy use and has therefore a great potential in overcoming this challenge, by increasing the energy efficiency and integrating renewable energy sources. It is important that these measures are studied on a district or city level to include the synergy effects that result from the ...
Multinational firms in (Global) Cities: Mimicry, Knowledge networks, and Economic Growth KU Leuven
This dissertation examines the dynamic interrelationship between MNEs and cities. First, it examines cities as MNEs’ foreign direct investment location choice and imitation processes within these FDI location choices. Imitation not only enhances the attractiveness of the city by contributing to the generation of agglomeration economies and by encouraging additional imitation, but it also contributes to the further development of the ...
Cost-effective processing and refining of lithium into lithium hydroxide from strategic European multi-mineral lithium hard-rock projects KU Leuven
On 16 March 2023 the EC published the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) setting “benchmarks along the strategic raw materials value chain and for the diversification of EU supplies”. By targeting the domestic processing and refining of lithium – arguably “the most strategic CRM”– LITHOS directly contributes to the 1st and 2nd CRMA benchmarks (10% domestic extraction; 40% domestic processing). LITHOS processes and refines the ores from three ...
Uncovering unpaid labour: a qualitative study of platforms’ strategies for control and platform workers’ practices of misbehaviour in Belgium KU Leuven
Scholarly interest in platform work – i.e., paid work mediated via online and location-based labour platforms - has surged in recent years. A significant strand of literature has examined the various ways in which platforms establish control through the use of digital technology and algorithms. More recently, researchers have also started to explore the active role of platform workers, pointing to various forms of engagement with and ...
Sustainable, decarbonised vanadium, titanium and iron extraction from Europe’s low-grade vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite deposits KU Leuven
The EC’s Critical Raw Materials (CRM) Act sets multiple benchmarks for reducing Europe’s dependency on a few unlike-minded third countries for strategic/critical raw materials. Through the domestic extraction of two CRMs – “vanadium” (V) and “titanium metal” (Ti metal) – AVANTIS addresses the first target of the Act (> 10% domestic extraction, for V & Ti). AVANTIS’ rationale lies in the fact that Europe has a multitude of unexploited, ...