Cities in the global South are rapidly growing in size, but many marginalised and vulnerable residents (such as lower-income households, older adults, women and people with disabilities) do not have affordable, safe and accessible public transport, which reduces their ability to have decent work, healthcare and social life. Transport planning largely ignores access inequalities but prioritises efficiency and economic benefits. This project will go beyond traditional engineering approaches by taking a novel, user-centred intersectional approach that recognises how multiple forms of discrimination (e.g. classism, sexism, ageism and ableism) intersect to produce urban mobility inequalities for marginalised groups. The central objective is to develop evidence-based insights for affordable, safe and accessible urban mobility. More specifically, we aim to: 1) explore how physical and social barriers to urban transport are widened by the existing systems and the social and economic implications of such barriers (SDG-11&9), 2) develop and contextualise measures to improve access to work (SDG-8), healthcare (SDG-3) and social life (SDG-10) through improvements in the public transport system, and 3) co-design an inclusive urban mobility evaluative framework that can provide guidelines for inclusive cities. We will apply an innovative multi-sited mixed-methods approach combining visual surveys, GPS-led-geo-narratives and multi-stakeholder hackathons. Inequalities of urban mobility will be studied in Delhi, Bengaluru and Dhaka, as these cities are experiencing major infrastructural changes and have populations with multiple access disparities. Inclusive cities with affordable, safe and accessible low-carbon public transport lead to a reduction of emissions and improvements in public health and wellbeing.

• dr. Marco Helbich
• prof. dr. Annelies Zoomers
• prof. dr. ir. Dick Ettema
• Seama Mowri

• Dr Sobin George
• Prof. Sangamitra Roy
• Dr Anindita Datta
• Dr Md. Musleh Uddin Hasan
• Dr Shanawez Hossain

• dr. Adnan Hossain
• dr. Bishawjit Mallick

The central theme of this research is social inclusion pursued in the process of transforming cities towards sustainability. The key aim is to consolidate a new research network: Inclusive Cities and Global Urban Transformations, which emphasizes the importance of transforming the city towards
sustainability for all. Through this network, we strengthen: (1) interactions between scholars studying inclusive and sustainable urban development within UU; (2) collaboration between existing networks of scholars and practitioners to jointly explore a new agenda for the production of more open and inclusive urban space at a global scale.

• prof. dr. Kei Otsuki
• prof. dr. Els Rose

The COVID-19 pandemic has strained the economies, health-care systems, social structures and living standards on the islands Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten. Using a human rights-based approach this multidisciplinary study will focus on the social impact of the COVID -19 pandemic and the State responses towards protecting vulnerable families. We apply to an multi-sited, mixed-methods approach to understand the diverse reasons that contribute to increase in vulnerability and measures that can be taken to build social resilience among families and communities. This study will also evaluate the performance of COVID-19 measures and make recommendations for futures outbreaks and epidemics.

• dr. Ilse van Liempt

• Prof. A. Duits
• Dr. Benedicta Deogratias
• Dr. Antonio Carmona Báez
• Dr. Jelte Elsinga
• Dr. Izzy Gerstenbluth
• Dr. Elisabeth Echteld

This  project  seeks to study what adaptation pathways to sea-level rise do vulnerable residents create or are part of in deltas. It has been shown that adaptation is a social process and pathways are intricately linked to social hierarchies, power structures, and thus affects who becomes marginalized. The paths of different groups (such as youth, older adults and women) as they adapt to change are interwoven with each other which affects social mobility or reifies inequality . Further, adaptation trajectories are embedded within social and environmental contexts across scales. The pathway lens our project uses aims to understand the different routes different groups have taken in the past, are currently taking, and will thus likely take in the future.By using this lens, our findings can help build knowledge for both citizens and government agencies about the likely effects of sea-level rise on vulnerable groups and how to develop resilient pathways to help these groups. Conducting this research in a number of deltas will
enable us to discover similarities and diversities between the cases.

• dr. David Henig

• Dr. M. Bayrak; Dr. D. Marks. Dr. S. Jehangir

??The current arboviral co-endemics of dengue, chikungunya and Zika superimpose major burdens on the afflicted countries. Curaçao still experiences the effects of the two last major epidemics, chikungunya in 2014-2015 and currently Zika. The proposed project builds on previous work conducted in Curacao. 

The study uses an integrated mixed methods approach to produce data which has implications  for clinical management, public health and health services responses to vector-borne viruses. We will assess the impact of chronic chikungunya disease on life quality and the influence of Zika/dengue infection in our known cohort of individuals 3 months to 3 years after the chikungunya epidemic; evaluate community preparedness and willingness to control mosquito breeding sites; analyse the preparedness, performance and utilisation of the Curaçao health system in the face of arboviral epidemics;
describe the geographical spread and clustering of cases of the chikungunya and Zika epidemics utilising geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis to better target surveillance and control measures. 

??Through this approach we aim to provide insights and recommendations to improve health policies and epidemic preparedness towards vector-borne viral diseases in Curaçao applicable to the Caribbean islands within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

• Dr. A. Tami
• Prof. A. Duits
• Prof. A. Friedrich
• Dr. I. Gerstenbluth
• Ms. V. Mulderij-Jansen
• Ms. C. Doran