Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and...Show moreThis study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and media theory, this thesis analyzes how users navigated and positioned themselves in the virtual realm. By focusing on DDS and the early Web, it sheds light on the Digital City's significance as an experimental space reflecting and influencing the evolving Dutch internet landscape.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and...Show moreThis study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and media theory, this thesis analyzes how users navigated and positioned themselves in the virtual realm. By focusing on DDS and the early Web, it sheds light on the Digital City's significance as an experimental space reflecting and influencing the evolving Dutch internet landscape.Show less
This thesis, concerned with ecological transitions, is more specifically set in the debate of sustainable agricultural practices in India. The chosen approach is a comparative study of two...Show moreThis thesis, concerned with ecological transitions, is more specifically set in the debate of sustainable agricultural practices in India. The chosen approach is a comparative study of two organizations providing seeds to farmers in India: on one side Bayer CropScience Ltd. (India), which promotes the use of hybrid, genetically modified (GM) crops and chemical pesticides; and on the other side Navdanya, which turns to the preservation and development of traditional seeds and practices. The primary aim of this research is to establish a clear link between belief systems and economic ecological practices. From this link, this research proposes a comparison of the values that have a significant effect on Navdanya’s inner workings and economic endeavors to values ruling over Bayer India in order to inform societal transitions towards sustainable economic models. This thesis concludes that Bayer’s episteme is characterized by its definition of progress as growth, and its co-dependence in equilibrium between shareholders and consumers that are more widely set in the Modern episteme’s anthropocentrism and objectification of the ‘other’. Navdanya’s episteme is characterized by a sacred understanding of biodiversity and an attempt to recenter economies towards women and nature in the idea that their creations is merely unpaid work upon which the growth paradigm relies. The two organizations are set in a polarizing tension rooted in the core beliefs of both paradigms.Show less
In 1895, the Dutch Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) convened for its first party conference. Two years later, the first SDAP members were elected to Parliament. Between these years and the...Show moreIn 1895, the Dutch Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) convened for its first party conference. Two years later, the first SDAP members were elected to Parliament. Between these years and the Second World War, the SDAP transitioned from a party with revolutionary aspirations to a fully normalized parliamentary entity. This thesis studies the SDAP’s assembly culture (vergadercultuur) in both the House of Representatives and their own party conferences. The first part of the thesis utilizes a combination of traditional and innovative digital methodologies to demonstrate that the normalisation of the position of the SDAP in the House of Representatives peaked in the mid-1920s. The second part of the thesis explores the development of the internal assembly culture of the SDAP, focusing on the role of the chairperson, procedures, time management, and usage of ‘persoonlijke feiten’, a phenomenon originating from Parliament. This section shows that while the internal assembly culture of the SDAP matured in many respects, this process was non-linear in many other respects, rendering the metaphor of maturation insufficient.Show less
Between 1914 and 1940, the SDAP dominated municipal politics in Amsterdam. Buoyed with the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1917 and the expansion of municipal tax powers in 1920, social...Show moreBetween 1914 and 1940, the SDAP dominated municipal politics in Amsterdam. Buoyed with the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1917 and the expansion of municipal tax powers in 1920, social democratic aldermen such as Wibaut and De Miranda sought to establish a welfare municipality in the capital. Through the municipalisation of basic necessities, housework, and social hygiene, and the provision of care for the sickly, elderly, needy, and unemployed, the alderman hoped to provide for the material welfare and mental well-being of the working-class. Municipal Socialism in Amsterdam was seen as a unique project in the Netherlands. However, the municipal socialist project in Amsterdam was inherently dependent on acquiescence of bourgeois parties in Amsterdam and the confessional national government in The Hague, not to speak of global developments and the world economy. Relativizing the uniqueness of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague concurrently pioneered different aspects of municipal socialism in the face of similar shortcomings. Amsterdam’s greatest distinction was its incredibly effective advertisement of municipal socialism in publications throughout the interwar period, reinforced by the opposition it inspired in the national bourgeois press. Practically, while Amsterdam’s spending and earnings in municipal socialist fields was generally above average, the capital did not spend or earn significantly more than other social democratic municipalities across all municipal socialist fields. Nor did the capital significantly outperform the two other major municipalities in municipal socialist fields. Thus, while the municipal socialist project in Amsterdam may have financially been above average in the Interwar period, it was not unique, nor significantly different. However, we cannot deny the political and ideational impact of the municipal socialist project in Amsterdam on interwar political thought and post-war public memory.Show less
Research master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis explores the way women in selected Euripidean tragedies engage with verbal communication and proposes that this female verbal repertoire can serve as a foundation for a feminist...Show moreThis thesis explores the way women in selected Euripidean tragedies engage with verbal communication and proposes that this female verbal repertoire can serve as a foundation for a feminist interpretation of the respective plays. Female interaction with verbal communication can be separated into three distinct categories: a) silence, b) song, and c) speech. Following this categorization, this thesis firstly delves into specific verses from Medea (259-268) and Hippolytus (710-723, 800-805) to indicate that female tragic silence entails a skillful manipulation of speech. Secondly, verses from Medea (410-430) and two fragments from Hypsipyle (752h 3-9, 759a 80-89) are examined to demonstrate how female tragic song can function as a lyrical form of feminine language. Thirdly, Pasiphae’s apologia (472e 4-12, 34-41) in the Cretans is analyzed to pinpoint how female tragic speech can be rhetorically constructed, serving as a springboard for self-exculpation and female empowerment. Drawing from French feminism and American post-structuralist feminism, this study orchestrates a dialogue between the Euripidean corpus and (post) modern feminist theory and indicates how a reader-oriented approach to the ancient texts can both honor a historically grounded reception of tragedy and suggest how modern audiences can imbue classical tragic texts with fresh meaning.Show less
Research master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis focuses on the epigraphic material found in monumental tombs from both Palmyra and the Nabataean kingdom in the ancient Middle East, discussing the use of the various terms for funerary...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the epigraphic material found in monumental tombs from both Palmyra and the Nabataean kingdom in the ancient Middle East, discussing the use of the various terms for funerary architecture in their dialects of Aramaic and Greek. The subject is approached from a sociolinguistic perspective, discussing the socio-cultural implications of the distribution and the use of the vocabulary. The combined evidence shows that the funerary sphere, as the most local sphere visible through the epigraphic evidence, is strongly impacted by social change. Different terms are used for different funerary complexes, depending on their location above or below the surface, or on whether they housed individual or grouped burials. The socio-economic developments in Palmyra and Nabataea in the first centuries of our era led to groups from a new upper middle class gaining interest in expressing their cultural identity through funerary complexes, which were previously reserved for the upper elite. These social developments and their consequences are also partly reflected in the vocabulary used for funerary architecture. This thesis hopes to show what a thorough analytical approach on a specific set of vocabulary can bring to the study of identity in the Roman Near East. Diachronic developments in the Aramaic and Greek vocabulary, divisions across region, tomb type and time will be examined, as they show how the funerary landscape developed in the ancient Middle East from the 1st century BCE up to the 3rd century CE. A database of all attested terms for funerary architecture will be provided and analysed, allowing for a detailed view into the use of these different terms across time and place.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This study seeks to account for the atrocious violence perpetrated by the Assad regime in response to the Syrian uprising that erupted in 2011. Academic scholarship, media reports, and public...Show moreThis study seeks to account for the atrocious violence perpetrated by the Assad regime in response to the Syrian uprising that erupted in 2011. Academic scholarship, media reports, and public opinion tend to understand the state’s violence against its civilians as a resort to exceptional means under exceptional circumstances. This study, in contrast, contends that atrocious violence constitutes a well-established practice, core to this regime’s modus operandi. The study’s objective is to substantiate, illustrate, and critically assess the proposition that atrocious violence perpetrated by the Assad regime is best understood not as a series of incidental exceptional ‘events’ but as a core practice, consisting of a set of sub-practices. The thesis analyzes a selection of primary and secondary sources in answering the research question ‘How to account for the Assad regime’s atrociously violent response to the popular uprising in 2011?’. Primary sources include leaked government documents, legal testimonies, speeches, and memoirs, operationalized with the help of the praxeology research method and a single case-study design. The massacre in Houla in 2012 serves as a primary case study, a narrative anchor from which to assess the strength of the proposition that the regime’s response to the 2011 popular uprising is best understood as the manifestation of a long-standing practice of atrocious state violence sustained by a set of subpractices that effectively make it virtuous across time and space. Specifically, the study identifies the sub-practices of legalizing atrocious violence, narrativizing reality, and consolidating the perpetrator elite.Show less
this thesis compares two important works, Aviezer Tucker's Our Knowledge of the Past and Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas, to a novel theory in epistemology, William Talbott's...Show morethis thesis compares two important works, Aviezer Tucker's Our Knowledge of the Past and Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas, to a novel theory in epistemology, William Talbott's Learning from our Mistakes. It argues that William Talbott's approach to knowledge can solve longstanding issues within the philosophy of history, particularly pertaining to the normative epistemological question: what should we be believing about the past?Show less
Research master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (research) (MA)
open access
What does it mean to be a good person? How should one behave? What is our soul like? How is it structured? And how does our soul affect our behaviour? These are questions that have occupied us...Show moreWhat does it mean to be a good person? How should one behave? What is our soul like? How is it structured? And how does our soul affect our behaviour? These are questions that have occupied us since the dawn of time. This thesis explores the ways in which Middle Platonist thinkers of the second century AD in particular approach such questions of good moral behaviour. As it turns out, these thinkers tend to focus on the human soul and its constitution in order to tackle moral conundrums. Therefore, the research question this thesis aims to answer is as follows: how do the Middle Platonists of the second century AD use the structure of the human soul in order to enforce practical ethics? By examining the works of Maximus of Tyre, Alcinous, and Galen – authors active in different genres within the Middle Platonic philosophical movement – through the lenses of both ancient psychology as well as ancient moral psychology, this thesis aims to advocate for the presence of a methodology of psychological morality in Middle Platonism: the structure of the human soul is noticeably being used in order to enforce ideal behaviour.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis investigates a recurring issue found in fieldwork on Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages: how can a linguist tell if a given language has the vowels [ɪ ʊ], or [e o], or both? These...Show moreThis thesis investigates a recurring issue found in fieldwork on Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages: how can a linguist tell if a given language has the vowels [ɪ ʊ], or [e o], or both? These two pairs of vowels – which differ in their height and ATR (‘advanced tongue root’) value – are notoriously difficult to tell apart acoustically, and their pronunciation varies considerably between languages and even speakers. Moreover, previous studies have only focused on how to distinguish these vowels in languages with both pairs; in languages with just one pair, how do we know if that pair is [ɪ ʊ] or [e o]? To address this gap, the main acoustic study of this thesis looks at data from Boa-Leboale, a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has historically been described as only having [ɪ ʊ], not [e o]. Using the results and acoustic methodology of Starwalt’s (2008) landmark study, I construct a number of hypotheses to test two research questions; research question (I) investigates whether Boa-Leboale has one or two pairs of vowels and research question (II) attempts to identify whether a given set of vowels is more likely to be [ɪ ʊ] or [e o]. The results of this study indicate that Boa-Leboale does indeed have only one pair of vowels, and those vowels are most likely [ɪ ʊ], as suggested by previous descriptions. Given this promising result, I hope that further studies will be able to improve on the study presented here and solve the issue of identifying these vowels acoustically not just for Boa-Leboale, but for any language.Show less
In my thesis, I explore and compare three films issued in the decades after the 1980s for their representation of neglected regional working-class memory – for which I use the term counter-memory...Show moreIn my thesis, I explore and compare three films issued in the decades after the 1980s for their representation of neglected regional working-class memory – for which I use the term counter-memory throughout my thesis – of Thatcher’s politics. Counter-memory presents the narratives of the people who struggle in the dominant culture. All three of the films in this corpus are directed by British filmmakers. The Commitments (1991), directed by Alan Parker, is set in Dublin, Ireland. Trainspotting (1996), directed by Danny Boyle, is set in Edinburgh, Scotland. Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot (2000) is set in County Durham, England. I critically examine how these films challenge or reinforce the capitalist hegemony of the 1980s and how their critique of society influences the memory of that era. Overall, I argue that the abovementioned films represent different sides of working-class counter-memory in a kaleidoscopic view of the same: counter-memory of the socio-economic effects of the political strategies in Britain and Ireland of the 1980s.Show less
