Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
Recent studies on social media have begun to unravel how these sites pave the way for a new type of surveillance: social media surveillance (Trottier 2012). Compared to conventional understandings...Show moreRecent studies on social media have begun to unravel how these sites pave the way for a new type of surveillance: social media surveillance (Trottier 2012). Compared to conventional understandings of surveillance as top-down and hierarchical, social media surveillance is mutual: users watch and are watched. Most studies on the practice of watching and being watched on social media are based on the experiences of ‘white’ North-American students and tend to overlook the experiences of a more diverse global population. This qualitative study aims to contribute to a broader understanding of social media surveillance, by examining the experiences of fifteen female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education. Findings from the interviews suggest how the students engage with social media surveillance in ways that represent their personal, cultural and religious values of modesty. This study argues that the students’ emphasis on online modesty can be explained in two-fold: (1) as a general effect of institutionalized disciplinary techniques on social media, and (2), as online pious micro-practices, conceptualized in this study as ‘virtual piety’. In doing so, this study not only contributes to a broader understanding of social media surveillance, but also contributes to studies investigating the way everyday practices are part of the process of becoming a pious Muslim subject (Jouili 2009).Show less
Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
This thesis has focused on the transition of the 798 Dashanzi factory from 'artist village' to 'art zone' to show the positive and negative effects of the implementation of creative industries in...Show moreThis thesis has focused on the transition of the 798 Dashanzi factory from 'artist village' to 'art zone' to show the positive and negative effects of the implementation of creative industries in the Chinese urban context. I traced its evolution from its origins as an electronics factory, to an appropriation of urban land by artists and workers of the creative field, to an institutionally-accepted and promoted centre for 'creativity' and innovation. This evolution is deeply intertwined with socio-economic factors which the Chinese government supported as vehicles of (urban) development since Deng's 1978 'Open-door Policy': the dismantling of the danwei (work unit) structure; urbanization; the emergence of a real-estate market, and the rise of an urban upper-middle class. In addition, since the mid-2000s and following the explosion of Chinese contemporary art in the global art market, the government has supported the implementation of Culture Creative Industries as a strategy to build Chinese soft-power and capitalizing on intellectual property. If, on the one hand, these policies had indirect positive effects, such as the preservation of former industrial structures and the incrementation of the local economy, on the other hand they had dramatic consequences on the social environments which were subjected to them. In particular, in the case of 798, the artist community that gave rise to the artist village has been dismembered in favour of commercialization and gentrification of the area. Contemporarily to 798, the Caochangdi artist village sprang up as an urban village on the fringes of Beijing and has constituted itself as an independent reality, taking advantage of the semi-regimented rural status and falling into the cracks of Beijing's residential administration system. Thanks to its semi-illegal configuration, it has managed both to take advantage of the new creative policies implementing local economy, and to maintain the local community somewhat untouched by top-down urban rehabilitation. By adopting a perspective from the theories of place-making and place-branding, the comparison among the two artist villages and the analysis of their transformations helped me to stress the importance of the role of communities in the management of these areas.Show less
Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
This thesis examines the ways in which the history of 1965-66 is remembered and represented in contemporary Indonesia, both in national public space and among a group of high school pupils in...Show moreThis thesis examines the ways in which the history of 1965-66 is remembered and represented in contemporary Indonesia, both in national public space and among a group of high school pupils in Yogyakarta. The history of 1965-66, a history of mass killings and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of alleged communist Indonesians, has for a long time been silenced and mystified by anti-communist myth-making that was created under Suharto’s authoritarian rule. Despite the end of Suharto’s regime in 1998 and numerous attempts to counter the state propaganda, this master-narrative that labels victims as perpetrators deserving of their fate is still widely available in contemporary Indonesian state and society. This thesis examines how and why master- and counter-narratives of “1965” continue to exist and circulate in Indonesia today. By combining a focus on contestations of the past in public space with research into the perceptions of the younger generation in particular, it explores how the politics of memory work in everyday practice. A survey conducted among 170 high school pupils in Yogyakarta provides unique insight into the highly complex and problematic ways in which the history of 1965-66 is remembered by a group of young Indonesians today. Thereby, this thesis provides further insight into the lasting legacies of mass violence in post-authoritarian Indonesia.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
In this research project, I aim to develop a framework for analysing contemporary theatre plays that deal with issues of memory on a meta-level. My claim is that a theatre of meta-memory often...Show moreIn this research project, I aim to develop a framework for analysing contemporary theatre plays that deal with issues of memory on a meta-level. My claim is that a theatre of meta-memory often takes place within a meta-theatre, meaning that a reflection on the role of memory goes hand in hand with a reflection on the medium of theatre itself. I will prove this by performing an in-depth performative analysis of three contemporary Dutch theatre plays: Als ik de liefde niet heb (Ro Theater), How to play Francesca Woodman (Toneelgroep Maastricht) and Kamp (Hotel Modern), which are all concerned with notions such as presence, the body, the use of media and the role of the spectator. In the end, I hope to show the importance and possibility of the theatre as a space of remembering, but mostly as a space in which new memory and meaning can be produced and contemplated.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
The construction of signs in the linguistic landscape (henceforth LL) of a given territory is driven by different reasons, and it can reflect upon an area's cultural, social, political, and...Show moreThe construction of signs in the linguistic landscape (henceforth LL) of a given territory is driven by different reasons, and it can reflect upon an area's cultural, social, political, and economic circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic that influenced all countries in the year 2020 has kept a common and stable topic for many signs, which provides a unique opportunity to conduct a comparative LL study. The current study investigates COVID-19 related signs displayed on public transport, shop windows, city noticeboards, inside museums and churches in France, Italy, and the Netherlands. By conducting a mixed-method comparative study in three European countries that were (and still are) affected by the pandemic to different degrees, this study contributes to detecting how their multilingual status, identities, cultural values, and socio-political differences are constructed through a combination of linguistic and visual/multimodal representations, using LL signs as a relevant dataset. The data include 766 COVID-19 related signs collected from July to September 2020, in densely populated, urban areas of France, Italy, and the Netherlands. The quantitative and qualitative results show that monolingual ideologies prevail in France, in line with the country's long-lasting "one nation, one language" policy known as "the Toubon Law". The French signs heavily emphasized the importance of following the rules for the sake of safety and public health as well as illustrated the Parisian identity as a fashion hub. France also had the highest number of multimodal signs, showing a greater focus on visual representation to get important messages across during the pandemic. Italy featured a fair amount of English influence on LL signs, which may reflect the importance of tourism to economic recovery in the summer of 2020. A trademark of the Italian data were the many unique and humorous signs, which, alongside the low percentage of government-created signs used during COVID-19, reflect the cultural values of the country (use of humour in response to adverse conditions, preference for individual efforts, distrust of government). The Netherlands featured the highest proportion of English influence in LL signs, in line with the country's high proficiency in English. Minority languages spoken by large immigrant communities were better represented in the Netherlands, showcasing its linguistic and ethnic diversity. Solidarity, collective action and cooperation were emphasized in many COVID-19 related signs, illustrating Dutch cultural values and the fact that people in the Netherlands may have more trust in their government compared with France and Italy.Show less
Research master thesis | Archaeology (research) (MA/MSc)
closed access
The concept of abandonment is often framed within a biographical perspective where the house has the possibility to be understood in different ways throughout its use-life. Previous studies of...Show moreThe concept of abandonment is often framed within a biographical perspective where the house has the possibility to be understood in different ways throughout its use-life. Previous studies of abandonment mostly problematized how abandonment depositions were indicative of how abandonment itself was conducted, but hardly engaged with how the house-site was re-used afterwards. This results in a view of settlements where the abandonment of almost all houses is something that cannot be commented upon. Consequently, continuity and change in the use of settled landscapes cannot be viewed in relation to how people dealt with their own pasts. In contrast with this approach, the central problem discussed here revolves around how the structured analysis of abandonment practices can help to define the house during and past its abandonment in order to add temporality to our interpretations of the settled landscape. This means that the ability of past places to be of influence on future actions is investigated, particularly pertaining to the prehistoric house-site. The resulting study dealt with abandonment from a practice-theory perspective, and attempted to highlight changes in use of the house-site between the house’s use-phase, abandonment phase and post-abandonment phase. Specific attention is awarded to how the house itself was treated through the detailed study of soil features. The case-study employed to demonstrate this approach is focussed at the Westfrisian Bronze Age.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
The present thesis is concerned with the difference between two definite marking strategies in Swedish: the double definite construction and the suffixed definite article construction. By means of...Show moreThe present thesis is concerned with the difference between two definite marking strategies in Swedish: the double definite construction and the suffixed definite article construction. By means of a distributional analysis of adjectivally modified definite noun phrases, it will be shown that the two constructions do not differ from each other in overall degree of Accessibility (Ariel 1988, 1991). The distributional analysis of the factor of Competition brings to light a clear distinction between the two definite constructions. The double definite construction is strongly preferred over the suffixed definite article construction in contexts where the noun is modified by more than one information piece. Based on this, a Competition Hypothesis is formulated. The basic formulation of this hypothesis is that the double definite construction in Swedish signals that there is competition on the role of antecedent, while the suffixed definite article construction lacks this function.Show less
Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
This study attempts to reconstitute the trajectory of the reception of Western classical music in the late-colonial era Korea by employing Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital. How did the...Show moreThis study attempts to reconstitute the trajectory of the reception of Western classical music in the late-colonial era Korea by employing Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital. How did the recipient classes acquire and secure Western musical taste as a new form of cultural capital and what kinds of aspects facilitated this process? In order to shed light on the multilayered colonial context behind this phenomenon, Arjun Appadurai’s five ‘scapes’ concept is applied to the following method of historical research: to examine, evaluate, and analyze official documents, contemporary newspapers, magazine articles, and advertisements, as well as previous studies on the history of Western music in Korea. This approach examines the reception of Western music from various angles. This research is a study of both ‘colonial modernity’ and the sociology of music, grafting the research framework of area studies onto that of musicology.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
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
closed access
The current study is an acoustic investigation of the three-way obstruent contrast between voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated and voiced stops in the medial position of tone sandhi domains...Show moreThe current study is an acoustic investigation of the three-way obstruent contrast between voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated and voiced stops in the medial position of tone sandhi domains in Lili Wu Chinese, a language that has an aspiration-induced tonal split in lexical tones. The main focus of the thesis was to examine the acoustic realizations of the three-way stop contrast. By analyzing acoustic data from twenty old-generation Lili Wu native speakers, we found that f0 perturbation was employed by speakers to contrast phonological voicing: voiced stops introduced lower f0 contours to the following vowels than the voiceless ones. Durational data on consonant release (c/v ratio) and difference in phonation types (H1*-H2*) were adopted as two cues to contrast aspiration: voiceless aspirated stops tend to be associated with greater c/v ratio and H1*-H2* differences than voiceless unaspirated ones.Show less
Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
This study investigates the relationship between actorness and effectiveness and questions the direct influence of coherent behavior united positions of EU member states on the degree of activeness...Show moreThis study investigates the relationship between actorness and effectiveness and questions the direct influence of coherent behavior united positions of EU member states on the degree of activeness the EU exerts during an international crisis. It looks at the interplay between actorness, the institutional setup of the EU and the role it took up during different crises. In addition to that, it questions the direct relation between a high degree of actorness translating into more influence on the international stage. It does so by answering the question if a more coherent foreign policy – as it is generally argued – would better enable the EU to exploit its capability as an international actor in global affairs. Two cases were studied to find answers on these questions: the Mali and the Syrian crises. In fact, the Mali crisis was characterized by a high degree of cohesive behavior, whereas in the Syrian crisis frictions were predominant even though a comprehensive sanctions regime could be installed. Institutional aspects, namely the changes with regards to EU foreign policy introduced by the Lisbon Treaty as well as characteristics of the member states, including size and length of membership, were vital as well. Further, the activeness of the EU in both crisis was different in the way that the EU took up a more active and decisive role in the Mali crisis as compared to Syria. Therefore, the expected effect could be found in both cases.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
closed access
Theory of Mind (ToM) is a central topic in psychology and neuroscience. Nevertheless, debates persist regarding the validity and reliability of ToM measurement. Recent documentation of numerous...Show moreTheory of Mind (ToM) is a central topic in psychology and neuroscience. Nevertheless, debates persist regarding the validity and reliability of ToM measurement. Recent documentation of numerous failed replications in ToM research, involving both children and adults, highlights the need for establishing effective methods for measuring ToM across the lifespan. In response to this challenge, an international multi-lab collaboration named Many Babies 2 (MB2) has been launched, with Leiden University Babylab participating in this project. This thesis discusses preliminary findings related to the 16 adults tested at our lab. Following the MB2 protocol, an eye-tracker attached to a screen recorded participants’ looking behavior (first look [FL] and differential looking scores [DLS]) in an anticipatory looking task. We had two main goals. First, we aimed to find evidence of an automatic and implicit form of ToM in adults, by investigating whether participants’ looking behavior varied depending on a character’s mental state (i.e. whether the character was knowledgeable (condition 1) or ignorant (condition 2) about a specific situation). Contrary to our expectations, neither FL nor DLS differed between the experimental conditions. Second, we examined whether participants’ looking behavior was affected by (a) the selection of the anticipatory period, and (b) participants’ simultaneous activation of a conscious and explicit form of ToM, which had been measured with a debriefing questionnaire. We concluded that none of these factors significantly impacted participants’ looking behavior at a group level. However, FL and DLS of individual participants randomly varied when processed with different anticipatory periods; therefore, further research is needed to determine which anticipatory period minimizes the presence of noise in the data. While recognizing the preliminary nature of our findings, our insights contribute to the ongoing efforts to refine ToM assessment methods, underscoring the importance of addressing challenges in measuring this fundamental aspect of human cognition.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
2014-08-31T00:00:00Z
This thesis investigates the word order and adjectival agreement patterns in French- Dutch code switched DPs. It examines the predictions made by two theoretical frameworks: the Minimalist Program ...Show moreThis thesis investigates the word order and adjectival agreement patterns in French- Dutch code switched DPs. It examines the predictions made by two theoretical frameworks: the Minimalist Program (MP) (MacSwan 2009) and the Matrix Language Framework (MLF) (Myers-Scotton and Jake 2009) and compares these predictions to data gathered in an elicitation task and a grammaticality judgment task. This thesis is the first study investigating the adjectival agreement in code switched DPs. The results of the experiments show no unambiguous confirmation of the predictions of either framework. However, statistical analysis of the data collected in the grammaticality judgment task showed that the MP is a better predictor for the grammaticality judgments, as sentences predicted to be grammatical by the MP were rated higher than sentence predicted to be ungrammatical by the same model. This difference was statistically significant to the 5% level. There was no significant difference in rating for the predictions of the MLF. This results of the judgment task in combination with the results of previous research highlight the importance of an integration of data from both naturalistic and experimental settings. Furthermore, the lack of unambiguous results from the grammaticality judgment task argues for an integration of other experimental methodologies, such as psycho- and neurolinguistic ones.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
under embargo until 2024-08-01
2024-08-01T00:00:00Z
Causal beliefs about depression can shape patient behavior and treatment adherence and in the case of adolescent depression, causal beliefs of both depressed adolescents and their parents seem to...Show moreCausal beliefs about depression can shape patient behavior and treatment adherence and in the case of adolescent depression, causal beliefs of both depressed adolescents and their parents seem to be of equal importance. In this mixed-method study, we aimed to 1) qualitatively identify the causal beliefs of depression reported by clinically referred adolescents and their parents, and examine the discrepancies between mother-child and father-child pairs and to 2) quantitatively assess the relationship between these discrepancies and adolescent depression severity, and investigate whether this relationship was moderated by the adolescent’s attachment security with their parents. As part of the RE-PAIR project, a total of 34 adolescents, 34 mothers, and 26 fathers participated in interviews and completed questionnaires. The interview data was analyzed using thematic analysis in ATLAS.ti, and hierarchical regression analysis in SPSS was conducted to test the moderation hypothesis. The results revealed a total of 12 distinct causal beliefs, centered around relational issues, stressful family context, and inherent characteristics of the adolescent. We found high discrepancy levels (i.e. low agreement: 0-54%) between the reports of adolescents and their parents regarding these beliefs. However, these high discrepancies did not significantly relate to the severity of adolescent depression. While this study was the first to examine both adolescent and parental causal beliefs in a discrepancy-depression framework, further research is needed to understand the impact of discrepant perspectives on treatment outcomes and to explore the level of parental insight and understanding (e.g. good communication/ attachment security) for their adolescents’ perspective, despite differing views.Show less
