Although most scholars would agree that the relation between development and migration is complex and non-linear, as a consequence of methodological and theoretical limitations, evidence is inconclusive, and contesting theories have remained largely untested. To fill this gap, this interdisciplinary research project develops new theoretical and empirical approaches to gain a broader understanding of migration as an intrinsic part of wider processes of development and change. It does so by answering the following question: How do processes of development and social transformation shape the geographical orientation, timing, composition and volume of internal and international migration? Answering this question requires the adoption of a long-term time frame and interdisciplinary methods.The objective of the proposed visit of Dr. Asmamaw Legass to UvA is to assist our research team to understanding changing land-use patterns and policy across Ethiopia in the last half-century. We will focus on Ethiopia as a whole, as well as our specific case-study within Ethiopia: the Adami Tulu Jido Kombolcha district. Dr. Asmamaw Legass has unique access to aerial photography, satellite images and land use/cover data from the Ethiopian Mapping Agency in Addis Ababa, and the University of Amsterdam has the facilities to analyze these images and data at a sophisticated level. Dr. Asmamaw’s research expertise is in the field of geography and environmental studies; we will combine his expertise with the migration expertise of our research group to correlate our findings on land-use and changing migration patterns over time. We are particularly interested in understanding the varying and inter-related impacts of 1) climate change/drought; 2) changing land policy; 3) population growth; 4) agricultural development; and 5) urbanization, on the movement of populations within and from Ethiopia.

Leerlingen in het voortgezet onderwijs schrijven veel bij de mens- en maatschappijvakken. De kwaliteit van deze teksten laat echter te wensen over, zowel op vakinhoud (redeneren met vakconcepten) als op algemene tekstkwaliteit. Dit project richt zich op de ontwikkeling van schrijfvaardigheid binnen de m&m-vakken, zodanig dat vakspecifiek denken en redeneren en schrijfvaardigheid verbeteren. De focus ligt daarbij op drie taaldenkhandelingen: vergelijken, verklaren en argumenteren. Op basis van wat bekend is over effectief schrijfonderwijs, ontwerpen en beproeven docenten en onderzoekers geïntegreerde schrijflessen en bijbehorende beoordelingsinstrumenten voor elk van de drie taaldenkhandelingen. Vastgesteld wordt of de kwaliteit van de teksten inderdaad verbetert en welke effect de interventie heeft op de schrijfaanpak en schrijfattitude van leerlingen. Ook zal onderzocht worden of de docenten zich beter toegerust voelen om leerlingen te leren schrijven in hun vak.

Complex dynamical systems is an active research area world wide, with strong connections to real dynamical systems, complex analysis, number theory and ergodic theory. It is a classical field or research, that really came to life in the 1970s, thanks to fundamental contributions of many of the worlds strongest mathematicians, combined with new intuition and inspiration arising from computer pictures. Since the 1990s there has been particular interest in higher dimensional dynamical systems, starting with fundamental contributions of Hubbard and Oberste Vorth, Bedford and Smillie, and Fornaess and Sibony. This new direction of research has lead to new connections with related fields of research such as algebraic and complex geometry. In the last five years there has been great progress in this line of research. One of the most visible breakthroughs is the discovery of wandering Fatou components for polynomial maps, in a joint publication of Han Peters in Annals of Mathematics. Besides settling an old conjecture, this discovery gave rise to a whole range of new open problems, besides giving a new impulse to already existing problems, such as the possible existence of wandering domains for complex Henon maps. These questions are the topic of an ongoing Top 2 grant of Han Peters, which involves 2nd year PhD student Lorenzo Guerini. A recent new direction concerns the study of transcendental dynamical systems in higher dimensional dynamics. In a recent collaboration of the Peters and Fornaess, with Anna Miriam Benini and Leandro Arosio, a new class of maps called transcendental Henon maps was introduced and studied. It was shown that these maps portray a wide range of interesting dynamical behavior, but that they are considerably more rigid than arbitrary holomorphic automorphisms, offering more potential for rigorous description of the dynamics. A particularly interesting open problem is whether these maps always have infinite topological entropy. Peters and Fornaess, in collaboration with Benini, recently made an important step in solving this conjecture, by proving that transcendental maps in one complex variable always have infinite entropy.

Impulsive Action: Emotional Impulses and their control

Academia is suffering from a great paradox in the digital society. The so-called ‘datafication of everything’ results in unprecedented potential and urgency for independent academic inquiry. Yet, academics are increasingly confronted with unwarranted obstacles in accessing the data required to pursue their role as critical knowledge-institution and public watchdog. An important reason behind this, is the increasing centralisation and privatisation of data infrastructures underlying society. The corporations managing our data infrastructures have strong (legal, technical and economic) disincentives to share the vast amounts of data they control with academia, effectively reinforcing the ‘black box society’ (Pasquale, 2014). As a result, there is an important power asymmetry over access to data and who effectively defines research agendas. This trend has only worsened after recent ‘data scandals’, especially in the wake of Cambridge Analytica. Calls for more transparency from academia and civil society have been largely unsuccessful and efforts to scrutinise data practices in other ways often run into a range of hurdles. At the same time, new and proposed policy documents on algorithmic transparency and open science/data remain abstract. Against this backdrop, the project will explore how the law – ie transparency obligations and data protection access rights – can be used by the academic research community as a tool for breaking through these asymmetries. This may appear counter-intuitive as academics are often confronted with legal arguments to prevent access to data, often for valid reasons such as privacy protection or intellectual property. Yet, these arguments are often abused as blanket restrictions, preventing more balanced solutions. The project is aimed at unpacking the many issues underlying this tension and evaluate how the respective information asymmetry between academia and big tech can be resolved in light of the fundamental rights framework.