Governments are experimenting with the development and deployment of blockchain applications to improve their services. This might lead to complexity and uncertainty about government responsibilities and the optimal design of rules. The interdisciplinary project ‘Blockchain in the network society’ investigates how distributed technology (blockchain) combined with rule-based algorithms (smart contracts) affect rule of law values. More specifically, the CHAIN research team investigates through literature review and two case studies how transparency and accountability are operationalized in practice. Ultimately, CHAIN studies how these blockchain applications can be designed in a transparent and legitimate way, so that citizens can trust the government.

Digital government often incorrectly assumes that citizens have access to the Internet, have average literacy and digital skills, and can exercise their rights before public bodies. However, at some point in their lives most citizens will struggle with exercising their rights before government, particularly when they are required to engage with complex digital forms. This project conceptualizes the concept of administrative vulnerability as a new form of inequality and investigates how this problem can be solved .

A Legal Geography of Climate Change: Responsibility and Justice in Planetary Perspective “Anthropocene” is the proposed term for the period in which humans are destabilizing the Earth’s life-supporting systems. While the planetary perspective of the Anthropocene shows the scope of human-inflicted harms, it struggles to demonstrate their geographic distribution. As a result, questions of responsibility and justice remain unanswered. This project examines how international law deals with climate change, a core problem of the Anthropocene, and what this means for the allocation of responsibility and questions of justice.

In Antarctica, numbers of tourists and visited sites have been increasing for over 30 years. This is a concern for Antarctic biodiversity and wilderness values because the sum of effects (cumulative impacts) of these activities is unknown. This program aims - together with societal partners - to contribute to solutions by providing policymakers and the tourist sector the following knowledge: an Antarctic tourism forecast (20 years), maps of Antarctic biodiversity and wilderness values, an inventory of cumulative impacts, a monitoring system, and an identification of strategies and regulatory tools to minimize future cumulative impacts on Antarctic biodiversity and wilderness values.

The NWA project Revitalized Democracy for resilient societies (NWA.1292.19.048)(PI prof dr F. Hendriks) includes an edited volume with a reputed international publisher (Edward Elgar) in open access. Hereby, I apply for a grant of 10.000 Euros (Open Science Open Access Books) which would cover (part of) the costs involved. The budget of said NWA-project does not suffice to cover the full costs, as many other costs need to be covered by it. As attached documents testify, all actors (editors, authors, publisher) are lined up to turn this into a fitting output of said NWA project. Start date and end date mentioned below concern the delivery of said (sub)activity.