Research Topics

“Us know who is to blame”: Understanding Popular Political Discontents in the Netherlands

In recent years, there has been quite some discussion about rising support for populist parties, and political distrust. While research has mostly focused on populist party leadership and discerning the antecedents of political distrust and populist voting, the perspectives and meanings of ordinary politically discontented citizens have largely been neglected. In my research project, I study the political discontents as they are formulated by ordinary people. This research project has resulted in a differentiation of political discontents (paper 1), an analysis of how people have come tot turn their backs on established politics (paper 2, video1), and an assessment of the claim that ‘populism channels discontent’, which takes the form of a comparison between populist party voters’ and non-voters’ political efficacy (paper 3, video 2). These findings demonstrate the importance of taking ordinary people’s meanings and formulations seriously in our analysis of contested societal phenomena.

Open EUC to the city of Rotterdam: education sustainability and ‘learning by doing’ approach

During the last years, Dr. Sergio Mugnai has developed a solid curriculum aiming at opening the EUC community to the city of Rotterdam in the field of sustainability as an essential practical part of his educational activities, more specifically in the field of educational sustainability. These scholarship activities can be recognized as an opportunity for strengthening the connection between EUC and the city, thus emphasizing the importance of making EUC an institution that works ‘for’ the city and not only ‘inside’ the city. On the other hand, these activities allow Dr. Sergio Mugnai to be constantly updated on the dynamics occurring in his fields of expertise from a practical perspective, as well as allowing his students to experience the ‘theory from practice’ and the ‘learning by doing’ paradigms.

The scholarship activities for which Dr. Sergio Mugnai is aiming at develop in the field of educational sustainability are:

1. Circular Economy at BlueCity Rotterdam
2. Sustainable Food at Erasmus Food Lab

Defending Fundamental Rights in our Globalized World

My field of research encompasses fundamental rights in a global context. Anti-discrimination and rights of migrants are two important sub-fields. Both of these fields can best be approached from a transdisciplinary approach, due to their highly complex nature. While my research is mainly focused on the legal aspects of these phenomena, I heavily utilize insights from other disciplines in my application of law.

Developing innovative, transdisciplinary, sustainable educational strategies for a shifting world

My research focuses on qualitative understandings of the impact of global crises such as environmental collapse, socio-economic inequality and the coronavirus pandemic on students’ concepts of identity and selfhood. I am working to develop participatory and transdisciplinary education action research methods that build a direct connection between education research and innovative educational practice. In particular, I bring together ontological insights from existential phenomenology and emancipatory practices from critical pedagogy to generate knowledge about the experience of learning in times of radical uncertainty. My research approach borrows from interpretive phenomenological analysis, phenomenography, grounded theory and critical ethnography, building up to what I have called “structured education action research”.

‘Working with Nature’ in the Anthropocene: Environmental Management beyond Man the Controller

In the context of far-reaching and unpredictable climate change, environmental management and environmental policy discourse has witnessed the emergence of a novel environmental management paradigm: that of ‘fostering resilience’. Fostering the resilience of ecosystems is positioned not only as a way to maximize ecosystem’s abilities to respond to and bounce back from environmental stressors (e.g. pollution, floods, fires), but also as way to reconcile diverse social, economic, and ecological interests.

Conceptually, the rise of resilience disrupts anthropocentric understandings of the relationships between natural environments and environmental management. ‘Working with rather than against nature’ is a recurring slogan in environmental policy discourse. Drawing on Puig de la Bellacasa’s work on human-nonhuman constellations of care, this project seeks to conceptualize what novel relationships between humans and nonhumans are crafted and negotiated as a result of this rise of resilience. Moving beyond celebratory or critical accounts, it aims in particular to tease out possibilities to dissent-within resilience, articulating a novel ethics of environmental management.

Future Matters: Enacting utopia in innovative transdisciplinary education

In my PhD research, I adopt a material semiotic sensibility to trace enactments of the utopian in the transdisciplinary minor “Re-Imagining Tomorrow through Arts and Sciences”. The utopian is here not defined as a blueprint or representation of a perfect world or future, but as a process, a mode of striving towards something that is better, and which is embedded in everyday practices (Cooper, 2014, Levitas, 2013). Mapping how the utopian is performed in the relations between (digital) learning spaces, tutors, students, learning materials and institutions, provides insight into how innovative educational practices move between existing structures and systems and alternative spaces. By focusing specifically on the spatial and temporal dimensions of both transdisciplinary education and utopian everyday practices, I explore how the material and the social are entangled in the performance of new forms of teaching and learning that aim to create more socially and ecologically just futures. The PhD research goes hand in hand with action research as part of which a new pedagogical approach to transdisciplinary education across arts and sciences is being developed.

Fostering transformative change through urban ecology and education for sustainability

We are currently facing an unprecedent ecological crisis that is characterised by persistent wicked problems, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Societal challenges such as social inequality, power imbalance and injustice are intrinsically connected to this crisis and either contibute to or result from it. Such complex and intricated challenges require new approaches to promote positive change towards social transformation for a sustainable society. The science of Ecology, with its inherently interdisciplinary focus, can play an important role in this transition.

Drawing from the interactions between organisms and their environment, resilience and systems theory my research aims to develop and evaluate actions of transformative change towards a more sustainable future through urban ecology and education for sustainability.

Competition law in the data economy

Many firms that are operating in the digital economy have experienced substantial growth over the past few years. One of the important elements for several of these firms is the collection of (user) data, which provide important insights in habits of the customer and the usage of the product or service. This research will look at the relation between competition law and other relevant fields of law on markets where data plays an important role. These situations often take place at the intersection of competition law, privacy law, consumer protection law and intellectual property rights. The increasing attention to privacy and protection of consumers in today’s society, in combination with the observation that consumers seem to relatively carelessly provide their data to firms, provides an important challenge for competition law in the coming years. A deeper understanding of the role of competition law and the consequences of this role on competitive outcomes (innovation, consumer welfare) is therefore essential.

Critical world citizenship: from theory to praxis

My research activities at EUC can be divided into two pillars. On one hand, I focus on educational innovation. This consists of designing a course experience to practice critical world citizenship in real-life setting through an exchange with students from the Middle East. More info can be found in this news item and on this webpage of the Community of Learning and Innovation (CLI). On the other hand, I pursue classic research activities (fieldwork, conferencing, publishing) from a transdisciplinary perspective, combining political sociology and Middle Eastern studies.

Both of these pillars are connected to ECLAS’ and EUR’s ambition to produce knowledge that has societal impact and shows engagement with real-life issues. The way I contribute to this is by sharing with students and colleagues my conviction that we need to constantly broaden our horizon and foster genuine understanding of communities that are often marginalized in mainstream academic or media discourse. This attitude also informs my own curriculum, my research and my teaching portfolio. A concrete illustration can be found in my work on the interaction of architecture, politics and religion in Arab and Muslim societies.

Technological change and firms’ involvement in international trade

My research activity within the project “Trade, technology, and employment dynamics” (COTDYEM) investigates the impact of technological change and international trade on labour at the micro level, using extensive firm- and worker-level administrative data (social security forms, balance sheets, customs data, and patent data) on the whole population of French firms. In particular, I am currently researching the impact of investment in automation-related technologies on firms’ employment flows and wage distribution. Other research topics include: differences in the effects of automation on labour related to the position in global value chains and/or geography; the nexus between productivity and worker flows; the nexus between the complexity level of exporting firms’ product mixes and their growth performance.

In another line of research, I investigate topics related to technological change and international trade in a historical perspective. Notably, I use data from the catalogues of international exhibitions as an indicator of economic activity (production, innovation, trade) in the second half of the 19th century and in the early 20th century.

Worldly education

The project develops a philosophy of education with central involvement of the work of Hannah Arendt in both educational-theoretical and political engagement. The project thus aims to bridge philosophy of education (e.g. what is the responsibility of educators?) with political theory (e.g. what are the requirements of a public sphere to which education can meaningfully contribute?).

Among the key positions of the published work are the following:

• Arendtian philosophy of education can help to understand the value and importance of Problem-Based Learning;
• The primary commitment of education should be the continuation and renewal of the world;
• Current scholarship on Arendt’s educational philosophy addresses many important avenues for further reflection, but also has lacunas: notably when it comes to the climate crisis and a critical reflection on populism;
• Educational authority has a role to play in education today: namely when it is reformulated as ambiguous authority. This type of authority is temporally rooted in the present, spatially in both the world of culture and the natural world, and relationally in what we call, with Giorgio Agamben, the ambiguous zone in between private and public spheres;
• The responsibility of educators is twofold: personal and political. This calls for a specific and mutually engaging relationship between education and society, which in turn connects to existing literature on what a ‘school’ (and related to that, a university) should be.

Moving forward, we aim to write on natality (a central concept in Arendt), the notion of Bildung and its relevance today. We also aim to develop a critique of Arendt’s blind spots (climate, political economy: in short, materiality) and what this entails for her central notion of vita activa.

From Big Natural History to Urban Ecology

As of November 2020, Prof. Vink is holder of the Network Chair 'From Big Natural History to Urban Ecology'. This Network professorship links the educational and research activities of EUC (ECLAS and Erasmus University) with those of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam ('Het Natuurhistorisch' or NMR). As part of the Network Chair and ECLAS, the following research lines will be pursued.

1. Studies on the existing collection of the NMR. In the first half of 2021, we will determine which parts of the NMR collection (of around 373.200 specimens) warrant further studies (potentially leading to publications).
2. Studies on novel fossils from North Sea and Westerschelde. The first project will be initiated in January 2021, and will focus on the classification of Equus (horse) fossils (114 in total) from the Late Pleistocene North Sea,.
3. In collaboration with the urban ecology unit of the NMR, bureau Stadsnatuur (bSR), we will monitor selected parts of urban nature. These studies will not only focus on animals, such as bats, rats, rabbits, seagulls and pigeons, but also on lichens. Lichens are symbiotic life forms consisting of fungi and either algae or cyanobacteria.They form an integral part of the microbiological biodiversity of both rural and urban environments. As the presence of some types of lichens is indicative of nitrogen-rich (but ecologically 'poor') environments, the spatial and temporal monitoring of lichens in the city will provide information on the ecological quality of specific urban areas.
4. Together with the NMR, we have teamed up with other biopartners in Rotterdam to focus on studying -as well as raising awareness on the importance of- urban biodiversity. These biopartners include Trompenburg Tuinen & Arboretum, Diergaarde Blijdorp en de Botanische Tuin Afrikaanderplein. The main aim of this collaboration is to increase awareness among the citizens of Rotterdam, as well as municipality administrators and officials, of the need for conservation and promotion of urban biodiversity. This initiative is in line with the recently published Uitvoeringsagenda Biodiversiteit by the municipality of Rotterdam (https://www.rotterdam.nl/nieuws/biodiversiteit/).