This project aims to develop a new approach for rating mental health apps, taking into account the subjective needs of users in the mental health community. In particular, our aims are to show that 1) an automatic rating of safety in relation to mental health apps is possible, and 2) such an automatic rating system can take into account subjective needs of app users. Our goal is to build a prototype of an automatic rating system for affective safety, while also demonstrating the limitations of what cannot be automated in such a rating system. The Covid-19 pandemic has driven demand for apps as key tools, either mandatory or voluntary in nature, for responding to social and scientific challenges including both mental health and public health in general. Yet we have not updated app regulation standards or rating procedures for a world where apps are often mandatory, and where people in a situation of vulnerability increasingly use apps based on business models originaging in the commercial sphere. This scaling up and the public concern over health apps during the pandemic have created an explicit need for the definition and rating of apps with regard to affective user safety. This project aims to contribute to giving apps a sounder basis in standards and regulatory clarity, and in turn to make informed trust in apps more possible.

The global financial crisis put basic tenets of neoliberalism into question. Previous crises on product safety also exemplified the limits of delegating regulatory power. However, in the medium run, private regulatory bodies re-assume their previous powerful status and continue to exert undue influence on the functioning of economic activity. This research project investigates the origins and causes of the dominance of private rule-making bodies, focusing on their mutability and resilience. It does so by addressing the following research question: what enabling conditions, innate traits and mechanics allow for the transformation, adaptability and resilience of private rule-making bodies amid exogenous regulatory shocks and how does the law perpetuates this dominance? This project develops a multidisciplinary conceptual framework to analyse structures, institutional design and adaptive/resilience strategies in 10 non-public regulatory bodies and their public law counterparts. Data are collected via qualitative methods (interviews with key individuals, direct observations, historical institutionalism, process tracing) to identify trajectories of change and causation spanning three decades. This research is groundbreaking in three ways: (1) by delving into the peculiarities of private collective action, it sets the basis for a new theory of creation, evolution and resilience of such action; (2) by integrating multiple disciplines, it innovates methodologically and offers a multidisciplinary and thus more comprehensive theory of private action in the service of future generations of researchers and policymakers; (3) by collecting data and theorizing on a largely unexplored (from an empirical viewpoint) area such as transnational standard-setting, it revisits the promises, flaws and limits of technocratic rule, results in a more balanced understanding of transnational regulatory governance, and resolutely offers a regulatory theory for private regulatory bodies.

Using an innovative ecological perspective, the objective of this project is to conceptualize and optimize the contribution of professional staff of universities to knowledge production within in the academic ecosystem. It compares case studies in the US, the Netherlands and Spain. Professional staff does not teach or do research, but is involved in organizing these tasks. Despite this body of staff now making up 20- 50% of university employees, this study is the first to consider its contribution to knowledge production. Insights into this major but still poorly understood component of universities contributes to more efficient and effective use of these public resources. The relevance and urgency of this project are that the European Commission will allocate approximately €40 billion to universities in Horizon Europe. The project investigates the expertise of professional staff, the way it concentrates and uses its expertise, the power that it exercises through it and the effects of its power on academic knowledge production. The study consists of 1) a literature review 2) network analysis 3) ethnographic studies of professional staff in six universities and 4) the construction of a conceptual model to explain the function of professional staff in academic knowledge production. The fellow will receive training at The University of Chicago and Leiden University and through a secondment at INGENIO (CSIC/UPV). It includes an ethnography course, network analysis training and teaching and supervision tasks. This facilitates the fellow’s transition into a mature researcher, well-prepared to establish a group studying the relationship between university governance and academic practice. Results will be shared with 1) academic (seminars, conference presentations and journal publications) 2) professionals (blogs, a conference presentation and journal publication for professional staff and 3) the wider audience (presentations at science events and a videoblog.)

In economics, a distinction is made between statistical and taste-based discrimination (henceforth, TBD). Statistical discrimination refers to discrimination in a context with strategic uncertainty. Someone who is uncertain about the future behaviour of a person with a different ethnicity may rely on information about the different ethnic group to which this person belongs to form beliefs about the behaviour of that person. This may lead to discrimination. TBD refers to discrimination in a context without strategic uncertainty. It implies suffering a disutility when interacting with ‘different’ others. This project systematically studies TBD in ethnically diverse societies. Identifying TBD is important because overcoming it requires different policies than overcoming statistical discrimination: they should deal with changing preferences of people rather than providing information about specific interaction partners. But identifying TBD is tricky. First, it is impossible to identify using uncontrolled empirical data because these data are characterised by strategic uncertainty. Second, people are generally reluctant to identify themselves as a discriminator. In the project, I study TBS using novel economic experiments that circumvent these problems. The project consists of three main objectives. First, I investigate whether and how preferences of European natives in social interactions depend on others’ ethnicity. Are natives as altruistic, reciprocal, envious to immigrants as compared to other natives? Second, I study whether natives have different fairness ideals—what constitutes a fair distribution of resources from the perspective of an impartial spectator—when it comes to natives than when it comes to non-natives. Third, I analyse whether preferences and fairness ideals depend on exposure to diversity: do preferences and fairness ideals of natives change as contact with non-natives increases, and, if so, how?